


Discord

by Luana Araceli (Luana_Araceli)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, NaNoWriMo, Nanovel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2017-12-31 04:36:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 95,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luana_Araceli/pseuds/Luana%20Araceli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jake finds out he's won a scholarship, he practically leaps the chance to get away from his family. His parents treat him like he doesn't exist, because he's always getting in fights, and they'd rather spend all their time with his older brother, Ryan. He feels like anywhere away from his family has to be an improvement. </p><p>But he's in for a rude awakening when he starts at Aifam. The school is full of teenagers who have been trained since birth to kill without asking questions--they are the children of assassins. And Aifam was built for them. It is their final test--if they can graduate from Aifam, they can join the ranks of the pros. </p><p>But in order to graduate, these students have to room with a scholarship student--a non-assassin--for the duration of four years. And until the final month of their senior year, they aren't allowed to kill their roommates.</p><p>And Jake's used to winning fights--in fact, he lives to fight. But when he's neck deep in a school full of assassins who can kill faster than he can blink--well, there's no end to the trouble he'll find himself in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nov 1st: Chapters One Thru Three

**Author's Note:**

> Jake, the MC of this novel, is a very angry person so he cusses all the time. If you aren't comfortable with excessive swearing, don't read this.

Chapter One

I won. A scholarship, no less. I’m not the kind of person who wins things. I never have been. I’m always second place, never first. And that’s okay with me. I am used to being the second choice. 

Second choice for awards. Second choice for medals. Second choice as a son. I am always in the shadow of someone better. I don’t see that ever changing. And ok, I lied. I hate it. 

I want it. Being first. I want it so bad I imagine I can taste it—but I don’t know what it tastes like. What does victory feel like? I don’t know. But I want to know. Is that enough? 

But the scholarship was the last thing I expected to win. I’d put in an application like hundreds of other poor students from my school, on the off-chance that I’d be selected. It is some cruel twist of fate that I was selected. 

Because it means that I have to show it to my parents, who are going to be ecstatic that I’d won something. Finally. Maybe they’ll even smile a little. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen my mother smile. She is always so disappointed in me. 

When I first started school, she expected a lot from me. Too much. Thanks to my brother. Ryan, Ry for short, is perfect. Or near enough. He gets top marks in all his classes. Never falls below an A average. He plays sports—soccer, football, basketball—and he is good at all of them. 

Ry’s three years older than me. Far enough ahead that my teachers don’t hold me to his standards, but not far enough ahead that my parents won’t. It’s been a source of contention between me and my parents for years now. 

My grades aren’t nearly as good. I hover between B and C averages in all my classes. My mom thinks I don’t try hard enough. My dad thinks I’m lazy. But they don’t get it. I don’t want to be Ryan’s copy. I want to be my own man. And I’d rather be a disappointment to my parents than be a mirror image of my brother. I don’t want to be in his shadow at all, let alone for the rest of my life. 

I don’t think my parents understand that. My mother was an only child—she doesn’t know what it’s like to have a brother who overshadows everything you do. Her parents doted on her. They still do! Grandma and Grandpa are over at the house all the time, making sure she has everything she needs to live comfortably. 

Granted, we’re all poor. Mostly they come over to make sure we have food to eat—or they make sure she does, with the result being the rest of us are fed. I don’t think my grandparents like me much. They see me the same way my mom does—as a disappointment, a failure. And, like my mom, they dote on Ryan. 

Ry gets everything. I’d complain about fairness, but I’m usually okay with it. Because it means that Ry can’t get away with anything. I’ve only seen him in trouble once—when he borrowed the car without permission to go on a date with some skank. But that was enough. 

My parents didn’t talk to him for a week. He couldn’t take it—he’s a total mama’s boy. And I watched him follow our mom around like a lost little puppy for the entirety of that week, apologizing every chance he got. It was sickening. At least I don’t have to put up with that guilt trip. 

My parents expect me to screw up, so I do it all I can. That way, when I do something amazing, they won’t believe it. I want it that way. They obviously don’t care about me, with the way they hang around Ryan all the time. I get maybe an hour of attention from them a week, if I’m lucky. And then it’s usually to listen to them yell at me for my latest grades or my lack of participation in school events. 

But that’s okay. At least they are talking to me then. I guess I’m the kid everyone talks about who acts out to get attention. I shrug. It’s okay though, because I’m still being myself. Would I like to get attention from my parents? Yeah. There’s no kid out there who can say they wouldn’t like it—and those who would say it either a) already get all the attention they can stand, like Ry, or b) get attention in all the wrong ways. But in the second case, if their parents were properly attentive, instead of abusively so, they’d be happy. 

And, perversely, I want to make my parents happy. So every time I get yelled at for bad grades or bad performance, I hurt. Something gets stuck in my chest and it makes it hard to breath, but I swallow it down and get past it, so that I can yell at my parents in turn. I ignore that hurt, because acknowledging it won’t do me any good. With my luck, if I try to talk to my parents about my feelings, they will just get angry and start yelling about me being too feminine. Whatever. 

I lay the scholarship granted paper on the kitchen counter and make a beeline for my room. I’ve got some time to kill before my parents get home. I toss my books on my bed, navigating around the dirty clothes I have scattered all over the floor. My room is another thing my parents hate me for. I like chaos, so my room reflects that. 

I have dirty laundry spread all over the floor, while my clean clothes are thrown haphazardly over my dresser. I do keep my trash changed, though—I hate the smell of rotten food. My computer is stuffed into a corner, with only a small light on the desk to keep me company when I’m browsing the net. I’m not much for the internet really. I just use it for email and schoolwork. 

I’m not exactly a social butterfly, but I do have a couple close friends. Jess has been my best friend since kindergarten. I knocked over the blocks she was using to build stuff, which made her angry. Five years old and I made a girl angry enough to hit me. We’re still friends today. 

And we’re just friends. There’s none of that sappy oh we grew up together and now we’re hopelessly in love with each other crap going on. Don’t get me wrong, she’s got curves in all the right places, but her being attractive doesn’t mean I want to date her. I’ve seen what she does to the guys who she dates—no thank you. She’s vicious. If I’ve ever thought of her as being date material, I don’t remember it—plus, I’m not that much of a masochist. 

She’s mean. Which is why we get along so well. I’m mean, too. I like to fight. There’s another thing that pisses my parents off. I’ve gotten into so many fights I can no longer count them on my hands. People open their mouths and say stupid things, so I shut their mouths for them. 

I won’t put up with people insulting my parents, my brother, my friends, or myself. Someone says one word wrong, I plant a fist in their face. It’s that simple. It’s why I don’t have a lot of friends. That Jess continues to hang around me is frankly amazing, because I’m not exactly nice to her. I don’t do nice. 

My other friend, Howard—Howie for short—is nothing like me. He’s nice. Too nice, in my opinion. He’s got a ridiculous amount of friends and he’s always trying to pull them out of one drama or another. I keep trying to tell him that their problems aren’t his responsibility, but it has no effect on him. He just smiles and continues to do whatever the hell he pleases.

I guess that’s why I like him. He is completely unruffled by my personality. He rolls with the punches, I guess, though that makes it sound like I hit him. I don’t. I’d never hit Howie. He’s my Yoda. I respect the guy, despite his niceness. Or maybe because of it. Because it takes a set of balls to be that nice to people all the time. 

He smiles at people I would punch when they insult him. I’ve only seen him angry once. And frustratingly enough, it was me he got angry with. I went with him one day to see a movie and when we came out of the theater, a couple guys I didn’t know came up to him and started talking.

Well, I say talking. Really, they came up to him and started harassing him. I don’t remember about what—it wasn’t important. But it pissed me off to watch him stand there and let the guys push him around, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and I put myself between him and the two clowns and told them they’d have to come through me to get to him. They tried. And failed, of course. When you live your life fighting every battle that comes your way, you get pretty damn good at winning them. 

The fight was the only thing I won though. Howie was pissed. He yelled—he actually raised his voice and yelled at me. I was so taken aback that I didn’t know how to react. I’d never heard Howie yell at anyone before. 

Man, when that guy gets mad, he really gets mad. He doesn’t get violent, though. Which is weird as shit. Who gets mad and not violent? I guess my friends are freaks. That’s okay though. I’m the biggest freak among all of us. 

Anyway. Howie yelled at me. He told me that I needed to stay the fuck out of his shit and let him deal with his problems his own way. He basically threw my words back in my face—I was always telling him to stop interfering with other people’s problems, so why the fuck was I getting the middle of his? He stormed off and left me stranded at the theater. 

I had to call my parents to come pick me up and they were pissed that they had to take time out of their busy work schedule to come pick up their lazy ass son. I had to listen to that “lecture” all the way back to the house. And it was only five minutes away. Fuck it. I should have walked. 

But Howie and I didn’t talk for a month after that fight. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I’d never fought with him like that before. I was used to a laid back Howie. Pissed off Howie was a completely different experience. It was like a switch had been flipped that had turned him into a completely different person. I don’t think saying I was scared is quite accurate, because I could easily take Howie in a fight, but I was apprehensive. I didn’t want to lose my friend, but I didn’t know how to keep him, either. 

Luckily, Howie has more sense than me. And he gets people a lot better. When I started hanging around waiting on him to get out of class a month after the fight, he took the initiative and started speaking to me again. It was like the fight hadn’t even happened. He only mentioned it once, and it was very off-hand, almost like it was an afterthought. Surprised the hell out of me. I mean, I can’t let things go, so it always weirds me out a little when other people can. 

It was a week after the fight ended and we’d gone to Pizza Hut to grab some grub. I was in the middle of a double pepperoni slice, when he looked at me across the table, met my eyes squarely, and said, in the quietest and most serious tone he’s ever used on me, “If you ever come between me and my problems again, I’m done. My business is mine. Let me take care of my own problems in my own way.”

Pretty sure my jaw hit the floor. See, Howie is this laid-back guy. He isn’t really all that serious. He isn’t quiet, either. I mean, he’s social as hell. The guy can’t go ten feet without running into someone he’s friends with. So it’s not like anyone expects him to be all super serious. 

But I guess everyone has a hidden side to them. And I mean, I knew Howie was different from me, because he can handle being around anyone. And I do mean anyone. He’ll put up with dumb skanks and treat them like they are people and when those kinds of chicks are hanging around him, I just leave. I get mean if I’m around stupid people too long. 

But Howie, man. He takes it all in stride. There’s no one beneath him. Maybe that’s why I like him. He doesn’t judge me and he doesn’t try and hold me up to any expectations. He lets me just be myself, so I can let my guard down around him. Jess, too. The three of us get together at least once a week. 

We’ve been doing that ever since I met Howie. Unlike Jess, I’ve only known Howie for three years. I met him during my sixth grade year, on the first day, no less. There’s only a month left before summer vacation and then we’re all moving on to high school. 

But I mean, Howie…he’s so hard to get a read on, because he’s able to relate to everyone on their own level. And he never talks about himself. Not like the rest of us do. I mean, me and Jess talk to him about shit in our lives. And if we ask what’s going on with him, it’s always “nothing much,” or “my life is boring. I’d rather hear about yours.” Shit like that. All the time. 

But I figure if he wanted to tell us, he would. Maybe he just doesn’t like people all up in his business. I mean, considering the only time I’ve seen him serious he essentially told me to back the fuck off, it makes sense. In fact, it’s the only thing that makes sense.

That day at Pizza Hut, he didn’t stop staring at me until I answered him. It was worse than taking a fucking math test, man. I never noticed before, but Howie’s got a hard stare. He’s got mean eyes. That’s not something you really notice about someone until their focus is 100 percent on you. So Howie’s niceness? I’m convinced it is a façade. I don’t know for what, and I don’t really care, as long as we keep getting along as well as we do. 

But I answered him that day. I told him that I’d stay out of his shit from now on, even if I chanced on him being beaten up by an entire gang. And he actually coerced an oath out of me, so now I really can’t get in the middle of his shit, no matter what. I may be mean and I may be a fighter, but I don’t go back on my word. Not ever. I live by my word and I’ll die by it, if it comes down to that. But I will never break it. 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

Actually, the fact that Howie and I are even friends is a freaking miracle. Like I said, we met on the first day of sixth grade. But it wasn’t because I went out of my way to say hi to him or vice versa. And it wasn’t because Jess introduced us, either, so get that out of your head right now. Jess isn’t even in the same year as us—she’s a grade higher. She got to skip fourth grade when I was stuck in it. Good for her. Fourth grade sucked. 

Anyway. First day of sixth grade, I walked into my homeroom classroom. I lucked out, as usual, and got the nastiest teacher possible. Mr. Reynolds. I mean, with a name like that, he was bound to be an ass. The sad thing is, that over the summer, I’d decided I was going to try and be a good kid for once. Maybe make my parents stop looking at me with those wounded eyes every time I came home. 

That plan lasted all of an hour, because Mr. Reynolds started in on me as soon as he got to my name on the roll-call. 

“Jake Collins,” he said. 

“Here.” 

He looked at me, raking his eyes over my outfit like it was the most outlandish thing he’d ever seen. I wore all black back then. So what? I liked black. And then he tilted his nose at me, dismissing me instantly as a troublemaker. “I do hope you’ll try to stay out of fights this year,” he said. “I’ve heard the rumors.” 

Now, don’t get me wrong, cuz’ those rumors? They’re well-founded. I’m a mean asshole—I have been ever since I turned eight and started getting in fights for the hell of it. What can I say? I love the way it feels to punch someone’s lights out. If you could be addicted to fighting, I’d say I am. 

But I don’t get a kick out of scaring people—my kick comes from knocking people down from their high horse. I can’t even tell you how many times people have come looking for me because they wanted to prove themselves a better fighter. None of those dicks have ever bested me. 

That’s not to say I haven’t been beaten in a fight, because I have been. Just not by losers like that. Then again, in a way, I’m a bit of a loser like that. Cuz’ I definitely go out looking for guys better than me when I get angry enough at myself. When I’m pissed at myself, I will find a fight I know I can’t win. Better than taking it out on one of the creeps that I can beat with both hands behind my back. I’m not one for picking on the weak. If I’m angry, I’m going to go fight someone stronger than me, so I don’t have to feel that extra guilt that comes with bullying people. 

Anyway, back to Mr. Reynolds. I didn’t like the way he talked to me. Not even a single bit. The rumors of me as a troublemaker, a fighter, a mean asshole—they were all true. But that didn’t bother me. I didn’t care about that. No. What pissed me off was that Mr. Reynolds didn’t fucking know me. 

He had never fucking met me and he was already judging me based on hearsay. That pissed me off real fast and ended all my plans of trying to be a good student in an instant. No one got to judge me without firsthand experience. That shit wasn’t okay with me. It will never be okay with me. 

But before I got the chance to speak up—this new kid, a guy I’d never seen before, spoke up for me. He was tiny, but to me, everyone is tiny. Even in sixth grade, I was tall—I was 5’6” then with broad shoulders and a strong body. My parents used to say—still do, really—that even though my grades suck and I don’t play sports, at least I was built like an ox. Mostly they say it in exasperation, though, and it comes up when they find out I’ve been fighting. 

But this kid—he was tiny. My guess was 5’2” for his height, considering he was seated. Hard to get a good read on height from that angle. But he was so damn skinny it was amazing his desk hadn’t swallowed him whole. And he looked exhausted. Like he hadn’t slept a day in his life. 

Despite the fact the kid looked like someone I could break in half with a pinky, he spoke up in my defense before I could. “Mr. Reynolds, I don’t think it’s fair for you to judge him based on rumors.” 

That had been what I was thinking! Who was this guy? I stared at him from my desk—not hard, considering he was directly across from me. The teacher had this weird idea that desks should be arranged in squares so that four people sat at each little ‘table.’ And the guy was at my table. Go figure. 

“And you are?” Mr. Reynolds asked. 

“I’m Howard North,” the guy said. “I just moved here from Arkansas.” 

Arkansas? Who the fuck lived in Arkansas? Were all the people from that state so damned skinny? Did the guy not get enough to eat? And what kind of name was Howard? I mean… only cruel parents would name their child Howard. It’s like an invitation for bullies saying look at me, I’m weak and a target!

Those were the thoughts going through my head, anyway. But I was also trying to figure out why this skinny ass new kid named Howard was willing to stick his neck out for a complete fucking stranger decked out in black and well-known for fighting. Granted, I also couldn’t figure out why he’d chosen to sit with me—the other two spots at our ‘table’ were empty. The rest of the class knew I was dangerous and they stayed the fuck away. 

“Howard, is it?” Mr. Reynolds said, and it was obvious he didn’t find the name very impressive either. “While I believe in being fair in most cases, Mr. Collins here has a history of aggressive behavior. It’s very well-documented.” 

Howard raised an eyebrow at me and I gave him a slight nod. He shrugged and turned to the teacher. “Yes, but if you always expect him to fight, then he’ll find a reason to fight, because you’re not allowing him the potential to be something besides a fighter. If all you see in him is all the bad crap in his past, how is he supposed to see anything else?” 

Mr. Reynolds stared at Howard. So did the rest of the class, actually, including me. Who the fuck was this guy? The next time the teacher spoke, he spoke to me. “Tell me, Jake,” he said, using my first name like he was forcibly swallowing the poison the taste of it left on his tongue. “Do you think you’re capable of being more than a troublemaker and fighter? Is Howard”—he said Howard’s name like it was sour – “here right? Can you make something more of yourself?” 

I burned to smash my fist into his face and wipe the smug ass grin he wore right off it. But I knew better than to hit a teacher—that was one rule I’d never violated, because I didn’t want to be thrown out of the school. And that was the one promise I’d made my parents when they realized I would never stop fighting. I swore to them I’d never hit a teacher and that I’d never let the violence escalate to the point that the school wanted me out of it completely. They couldn’t afford to send me anywhere else and I got that, so I tried to take all the fights I could off school property. 

My anger, even back then, was a potent force, and I wanted to say something that would make all the color drain from Mr. Reynolds face and probably get me sent to the office. But Howard nudged me with a foot under the table and gave me this look—not the one you’re probably thinking, where a good kid stands up for a bully and then pleads with their eyes to get them to think about their actions—and that look changed my life. 

Because it was a mean look and there were expectations in it. It was like Howard was saying, “Man, I just gave you a fucking out with this teacher. Are you really going to waste it after I went out on a limb and sacrificed my own social standing for you?” 

It was the first time in my life anyone had ever looked at me like I was capable of meeting their expectations. And I’m not afraid to admit that it scared the shit out of me. I mean—here was this new kid, who I didn’t know a fucking thing about—sticking his neck out for me for absolutely no reason. 

I wasn’t sure about the no reason thing, though, because people generally want something from you. I figured Howard was the same—he’d be another one of those creeps who tried to worm their way into being my friend, do something to piss me off or betray me, and then end up wondering why the hell I’d beaten them up. Then they’d stay scared of me for the rest of their lives and stay the fuck out of my way. 

So I decided to do things my own way, the way I always have, because I don’t trust no fucking body at my back. And I especially wasn’t going to trust this new skinny ass kid from Arkansas whose parents had saddled him with a name like Howard. 

I turned to Mr. Reynolds, fully aware of Howard’s eyes on me, and said, “I don’t give a fuck what you think about me, Mr. Reynolds. Just stay the fuck out of my way and we’ll get along just fine.” 

Mr. Reynolds paled—pretty standard, really, for a teacher to go white when I address them directly. Why is it teachers are all such pussies? I mean, damn. I swear a couple times and they go white with fear. Seriously, they’re adults. They should be used to the cussing, if the way my parents talk to each other are anything to judge by. 

Instead of responding to me, Mr. Reynolds turned back to Howard. “Well,” he said. “Howard, I do believe I have made my point.” 

I expected Howard to give me these judgmental eyes and be annoyed and disappointed that I’d gone against his look. But what I found, when I chanced a glance across the table, was a small smile playing on the guy’s lips while laughter danced in his fucking eyes. I’d amused him. What the fuck? 

Howard smoothed his expression and turned to the teacher. “No, Mr. Reynolds. I believe that Jake made his. You can add me to what he said, by the way.” I didn’t see it, cuz’ his back was turned, but I heard the drop in his tone. “You can leave me the fuck alone, too, and we’ll all have a pleasant year.” 

I may not have seen the way that Howard looked at the teacher, but I saw how fast the rest of the color drained from Mr. Reynolds face. And I saw his hands start to shake. That’s when I knew, then and there, that Howard and I were going to be friends. 

Mr. Reynolds finished the roll call okay, but I could hear the strain in his voice. He was terrified of us. When he was done, I decided I’d been quiet long enough and that, dammit, I wanted to talk to this kid and find out what his deal was. 

“So, Howard,” I said, testing the name out on my tongue. It felt soulless. I made a face. “Why the fuck did your parents saddle you with that name?” 

The question surprised a laugh out of him. He leaned forward, eyes still bright with laughter. “I guess,” he said, pitching his voice to a whisper, “that they did it to throw people off.” He sat back, resuming a normal tone. “I mean, look at me.” He motioned to himself. “I’m skinny, short, and look like an easy target. But I’m not.” 

I snorted. “Yeah, I kinda got that. What the hell did you do to the teacher, anyway? I mean, I know I scared him, but damn. You just about killed him.”

Howard rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair, tilting it dangerously—an action that would, for normal people, have resulted in an admonition from the teacher. For Howard, the admonition never came. “You find a look that can actually kill people, let me know,” he said, then changed the subject. “What’s your deal?” he asked. 

I raised an eyebrow. “What, you don’t think the rumors are accurate enough?” 

“I’m sure the rumors are accurate about what you’ve done and about the fact that you terrify most of your classmates and all the teachers,” Howard conceded. “But that’s not what I’m talking about.” 

“What do you want to know?” I folded my arms across my chest. I didn’t like talking about personal shit with people, especially people I’d just met. 

He shrugged. “Why do you antagonize people? What about fighting intrigues you?” 

I stared at him. “Those are pretty fucking personal questions,” I said. 

He grinned. “Maybe, but I’m the only person in this room who is willing to talk to you.”

Ouch. He had a good fucking point, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt when he drove it home. “You really know how to woe a man,” I said, dry. 

“I’ve had lots of practice.” He winked suggestively and then burst out laughing at the disgusted look I shot him. “For real, though, why do you fight?”

I shrugged. “Because it’s fun,” I said. “And because it keeps people off my back.” 

“Makes it hard to make friends, though,” he pointed out. “Doesn’t that bother you?” 

“Not usually. I do better without friends,” I said, refusing to let the bitterness I felt spill into my words. At Howard’s raised eyebrow, I kept talking—I couldn’t help it, it was like he was somehow pulling the words from my head. Talk about a weird fucking feeling. “People have tried to be friends with me before, but it never ends well.”

“Why?” 

“’Cuz they expect shit from me I’m not willing to give them. They get offended when I am not the person they’ve convinced themselves I am and realize that I really am just a heartless asshole. Then they start insulting me and I deck them. Then it’s over. They’re afraid of me for life, I’ve got another unfair fight under my belt, and I’m back to square one with no friends.” 

“No friends?” Howard asked, eyebrow raised. “What about that girl you were talking to before school?” 

I stared at him. This guy was that fucking observant? Was he that big of a people watcher? I mean, I knew they were out there, but I’d never met one before. Fuck. “She’s a friend,” I said, grudgingly. “But she doesn’t count.” 

“Why not?” 

I rolled my eyes at him. “Because she’s a chick, dumbass,” I said. As he titled his head in preparation to ask another question, I beat him to the punch. “She’s a friend, but she’s not a guy. She doesn’t get guy shit.” 

Understanding flared in Howard’s eyes. “Oh. I see,” he said. 

I scowled at him. I didn’t like being made to feel like I was blind to something someone else could see clearly. “See what?” I demanded. “What can you see?” 

Howard shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to offend you,” he said. “I just meant that I can see how it can be difficult for you not to have any guys who understand you to hang out with.” He leaned forward. “Can I tell you a secret?” 

I grinned. This guy was so unpredictable! One minute, he was all serious, the next he was laughing, and the next he was faking ominous. “Sure,” I said, relaxing for the first time around him. 

“There aren’t a lot of other guys who get me, either,” he said, then straightened back up in his chair. “But I figure I should be honest with you. You’re not going to understand why I said that for a long time, if at all.” At my scowl, he said, “Not because you’re dumb—because you’re definitely not. But because I do the opposite of what you do. I don’t stand out like you. I blend.” 

“So why’d you stand out today with the teacher?”

Howard waved a hand dismissively. “Because you were worth the trouble, Jake.”

“What do you want from me?” I asked, suddenly certain that Howard was after something. What it was, of course, I had no clue. But whatever it was, I wanted nothing to fucking do with it. 

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Honestly? I just met you. I don’t know you well enough to know if I want anything from you. But I hate it when teachers bully students—whether those students deserve it or not.” He made a sweeping gesture around the classroom. “I would have done the exact same thing for anyone else in this room. Only thing is, no one else here will be able to relate to me on any level.” 

I rolled my eyes at him. So not only was the kid named Howard, from Arkansas—again, where the fuck was that?--, but he also had some kind of weird hero complex? “Do you always feel the need to save people?” I asked, not bothering to hide the scorn the idea brought to me. 

He winced. “I wouldn’t put it like that,” he said. “But yeah. I like to help people.” 

“I’m not interested,” I said. 

He laughed. “Don’t worry, Jake,” he said. “I’m not interested in trying to save you. Pretty sure you’ve got a handle on your own shit. You definitely don’t need saving.” 

“That supposed to placate me or something?” I asked.

“Nope,” Howard said. “Just me being up-front with you. I get involved in a lot of drama, because I invest a lot in other people. I don’t expect anything from you and I don’t want you to expect anything from me.” His eyes clouded over. “Seriously, Jake. You’re a cool guy. I’d like if we could be friends, but I’ll let you make that decision. Just—seriously? Don’t expect much from me.”

I snorted. “So you like to save people, but only the people who aren’t your friends?” 

Howard gave me a crooked grin. “Something like that. I don’t try to save people who don’t need to be saved. I’d say you fall into the “takes care of his own shit” category, so I see no reason to save you.” 

“Good,” I said. “I see no reason to let you.” 

That startled a small laugh out of him. “Tell you what. You should bring Jess with you to the park Saturday, and the three of us can hang. Might be fun.” 

I shook my head. “You’re one weird motherfucker,” I said. 

Howard smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Definitely cracked.” 

“Here,” he said, pushing a sheet of paper with his phone number scrawled on it. “Text me if you decide to come. I’ll make alternative plans for if you decide to cancel on me.” 

I stared at him. Who the fuck made alternative plans for shit like that? Most people—normal people—would say something like “I’ll keep my plans free in case you decide to come,” not tell you they could do other shit. Like…really? Who the fuck was this guy?

And honestly, I have never really found out the answer. Jess and I started hanging out with him in the park every weekend and it became a regular thing. Ever since that first weekend, we haven’t missed a single one. No matter how cold it is or how sick we get, we always meet at the park. Sometimes we spend an hour together, sometimes the whole day. But we always go. 

Howie’s still a mystery, but he hadn’t lied to me when he told me I wouldn’t believe him about not having friends who got him. It only took him a week after that confrontation with Mr. Reynolds to become friends with every person in the class. His charm is ridiculous. I’ve told him numerous times that he could sell that shit on Ebay and make millions. 

But yeah. Howie’s cool. Even though he’s technically the third spoke of the Jess and Jake friend circle—or triangle—he never seems out of place. Then again, Howie never seems out of place anywhere.

I kinda envy him that, because I seem out of place everywhere, all the time. Except when I’m fighting, of course. But that’s because I go to a different place in my head and the only thing that exists then is the fight. The blood pounding in my head, the adrenaline rushing through my body, the satisfying crunch as flesh hits bone, the pain as someone gets in a good shot—there’s no high like fighting. So yeah, I’m a fight junkie. So what? At least I’m not getting high. 

And to the people who are getting high—you’re fucking morons. Seriously, a buzz is not worth the fucking trouble it takes or the money it costs. Nor it is worth the health issues if you end up addicted to the shit. Fuck that. Drugs are nasty. 

Jess disagrees with me on that. Typical girl, disagreeing with a guy. Whatever. She can ruin her life if she wants to. That’s not on me. I finally yelled at her enough that she stopped trying to fucking get me to hit shit with her and now she won’t mention it to me at all. Good fucking riddance. I got enough shit to deal with; I don’t need drugs, too. 

But if she likes them, whatever. I may hate drugs and think people are fucking morons for taking the shit, but I ain’t going to preach about it. Fuck that. Want to screw your life up? Go right ahead. I’ll sit here and watch so I can laugh at you. What can I say? I told you I’m an asshole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

Fuck. I flop down on my bed. I’ve got nothing to do until my parents get home. I mean, there’s schoolwork, but who the fuck does that if they have a choice? Nah. I’ll just lay here and stare at my ceiling.

Of course, my ceiling is pretty fucking awesome. Actually, my whole room is. I painted it a deep dark red on my 12th birthday. Jess and Howie helped. It was a lot of fun. They got why I liked the color, because it reminds me of how it feels when you draw first blood in a fight. 

Jess and Howie are great people. They don’t try to turn me into something I’m not. Jess’s friends absolutely hate that she spends any time with me at all, because I scare the shit out of them. They don’t get that Jess is safe with me. I’d sooner bash my own brains out than hit Jess. Or any other woman, for that matter-unless the woman starts hitting me first, of course. Fuck that I don’t ever hit a woman for any reason mentality. Bitch comes at me with aggressive intentions, I ain’t going to just stand there and let her beat me down. No fucking way. This ain’t the god-damn 50s anymore. If a girl wants to fight me, I’ll fight her back and I won’t pull my punches. Like I said, I’m an asshole. I’m okay with that. 

My parents, of course, disapproved of the dark red I’d chosen, but they’d promised me I could do whatever I wanted to with my room once I turned 12. So they bought all the shit I needed with disapproval in their eyes. I am so used to that though that it didn’t even phase me. I just ignored it while they bought all the shit and shrugged it off when Howie and Jess asked if I was okay. 

And we painted the whole room that dark red. Including my ceiling and my door—back and front. That didn’t thrill my parents too much, but I liked it and the door was part of my room. And then I hung up four posters. One on the back of my door, one on my ceiling, and one on the two walls adjacent to my bed so I can turn my head and look at them whenever I want. 

The first poster, the one on my door, is fucking brilliant. The background of it is pure white and there is blood pooling beside this guy where there’s a chick that is straddling this dead guy with a knife in his heart, with a look of sheer joy on her face. Her head is thrown back, brown hair streaked with blood as it blows in a million freaking directions because of the wind, her eyes are closed, and her lips are parted. She’s got the knife—a pretty silver dagger with a white bone handle—in her right hand, holding the dagger in the man’s chest. You can only see about 3 inches of actual steel; the rest is buried in the guy’s heart. Her other hand is braced against his stomach, like she’s using it to hold her balance. But there’s no other way to describe her expression but as sheer ecstasy. It is fucking brilliant.

My parents disagree, of course. They think it’s disturbing. They think its proof that I’m a disturbed teenager who needs a shrink. Luckily, we’re too damn poor to afford that shit, so I’m not saddled with a head doctor who thinks he can figure me out. Fuck that. If my own parents can’t figure me out after living with me for 14 years now, how will a complete stranger ever manage it? 

Besides, I’m not disturbed. I’m angry and I like to fight. That’s it. Yeah, the poster is a little extreme because it displays a death scene, but I ain’t never killed anyone and I got no plans to start. Murder is a little bit beyond me. I may not like people much, but I don’t want to kill them. Not literally, in any case. 

Anyway. The second poster I have, the one on my ceiling, that I lay awake at night staring at, is a bit more normal. Judging by my parents standards, anyway. It’s a black background, with stars in the sky and there’s a woman in the foreground. She’s so pale, I think that she probably only ever comes outside at night. And she’s beautiful. She’s wearing this light blue bikini top with matching bikini shorts—I guess it’s more of a tankini, or whatever, but who the hell cares about that shit? It’s snug, and tight, and it’s a swimsuit. 

She’s got a dagger holster tied to both her thighs and you can see just a bit of the metal gleaming from the sheaths. And she’s wearing a shoulder holster for the sword she’s carrying. Her feet are bare except for sandals, and there are knifes in sheaths around her ankles. She also has knives in wrist sheaths. 

She has pale blond hair, flung over one shoulder, and it falls down to her waist—she’s drawn in a side-profile, glancing back over her shoulder like she’s running away from something. She has green eyes that are very piercing and instead of looking terrified, she looks determined. More like she’s running from someone who she’s luring into a trap. That seems more likely, considering the dangerous aura all those weapons give her. 

That she has her sword drawn and is running with it is also telling. And the sword is beautiful, because it’s so simple. It’s not the usual elegant sword you see on posters. No. It’s just a simple sword, with the dull color of steel and the blandness of a sword used as a weapon and not a decoration. 

And she’s running along a coastline, the swell of the ocean barely touching her feet. There are footprints in the sand behind her, but you can tell by looking at the poster that she has been running close to the ocean to keep her track hidden. She may be leading her pursuer into a trap, but she doesn’t want to get caught too soon. 

I’ve had so many fantasies about that woman that I could go on for days about her. I fucking love that poster. It’s why it has the privilege of being the one hanging over my bed. 

The one to the left of me is hanging right over my computer desk. I need something to look at when I am forcing myself to do boring school work. It has a very simple black background and it’s a small poster-one of those square ones that only has a couple images. It’s almost like a coat of arms in how simplistic it is. There are two silver swords crossed in an X in the very center of the poster with golden brass knuckles nestled nicely underneath the center of the X. At the top of the poster it says No Price Too High for Honor. 

It’s the creed I live by. I love knives and swords, if you haven’t figured that out by now. I actually have my own sword rack. I only have three swords though—my parents are fucking stingy when it comes to buying me weapons. I’ve even taught myself how to fight. 

I keep those swords right beside the head of my bed and I sleep with a dagger underneath my pillow. Fuck if someone gets the jump on me, even if it’s just one of my family members. No one wakes me up when I’m sleeping if they don’t want to get hurt. I barricade my door at night so my parents and my brother won’t try and wake me up anyway—they gave up doing that years ago, which is fine by me. 

I have a katana, a tanto, and a chokutō. Out of the three, I definitely prefer my katana, but the tanto is a close second. I love Japanese style swords. Probably because the culture—the old one at least—is so tightly tied to the idea of defending your own honor to the death. And I definitely value my honor, whether the people around me approve or not.

My last poster, the one to the right of me, which is the wall that the side of my bed is against, is vastly different from the other three. It’s one that even my parents can’t find fault with. It’s another one of those small posters, but it has no image on it. It’s got a white background and it lists my honor code. I had it custom made. There’s only nine parts to my code.

1\. Believe in yourself.  
2\. Build your skills through hard work.  
3\. Don’t pick on the weak.  
4\. Don’t lie without good reason.  
5\. Don’t let anyone push you around.  
6\. Treat friends well.  
7\. Let others fight their own battles.  
8\. Don’t hold on to grudges.  
9\. Let your actions speak for you. 

Of course, my parents have no idea that it’s the code I live by. They think I just found a cool list off a website and gave it to them so they could have it custom made. They don’t know I wrote it myself—they wouldn’t believe I lived by it. 

They don’t believe a lot about me, because they don’t try to. They are too caught up in Ry’s perfect life to give a shit about mine. It sucks sometimes, yeah, but it’s okay. I got Howie and Jess. I don’t need anyone else. 

But that scholarship slip…man that blows my mind. I only put in the application on an off-chance because Howie suggested I do it. “You never know,” he said. “Maybe you can get in.” 

I scoffed at him, of course, but I did it anyway. I mean, the school the scholarship came from is really fucking prestigious. I read somewhere that the school, Aifam Academy, costs over a million dollars a year for those students who aren’t on scholarship. I mean, fuck. How was I supposed to know I’d luck out and have my scholarship application approved? 

It’s not like I wrote anything amazing, either. It was one of those typical applications where I had to write an essay about why I wanted to go to the school. I’m not a writer. So I just half-assed it. Except I didn’t really do that. I no-assed it, because all I wrote was a single sentence. One fucking line. 

And that line was “I want to attend Aifam Academy because my life currently fucking blows and I need to get away from the goddamned bullshit.” Good thing the school didn’t send my essay back with the acceptance letter. My parents would have a fit over that. 

Better for them to think I was a good student for once and properly applied myself at a task. Granted, my mother will look at me with her suspicious beady eyes and not say anything, but I know she’ll be wondering who I paid off to write the essay for me. Fuck you, mom. I did it myself. 

My dad will frown a little, because he won’t be able to quite believe that I managed something as spectacular as getting into a private school. But that’s okay, because I know I did manage it. And they can kiss my ass! I got into a school that’s so rich it makes my head reel to even think of it. I wonder if the walls are made of platinum or something. A million dollars a year and I can go for free. 

If that won’t make my parents proud for the first time in my life, then nothing fucking will and I might as well give up completely on trying to get any approval of any sort from them. This is the one chance I’ve been given to redeem myself and they better fucking appreciate it. I don’t care that I didn’t really try to get into the school. The fact that I did should be the only thing that matters. Whether it works out that way or not…well, we’ll see.


	2. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

 

I hear the slide of the garage door as my parents get home from work. The two of them met through an office party eons ago, but how two people hook up through a Pet Smart sponsored party is beyond me.

I mean, animals. Beyuck. My brother has a dog and I try to do everything I can to stay away from that creep. I came home one day and found him humping my pillow. Ugh. Why people think Chihuahuas are anything but creepy is beyond me.

Dogs in general just freak me out. Not in a _omg, I’m so scared I’m going to wet my pants and scream like a little girl-_ way, but in a –they are just fucking weird—way.

I’ve seen dogs hump leaves for fuck sake. What the hell is so appealing about a leaf? People say dog is man’s best friend—fuck that—man is dog’s wet dream. Why would I want to be around _that?_ Just…yuck.

The garage door slides shut, so I know my parents are finally in the house. I swear, they still act like love-struck teenagers. It disgusts me, really, because I’m always coming up on them when they are making out. No warning. Just blam—face full of gross ass parent make-out sessions.

But hey, at least I can say my parents are happy together. Their marriage, on that account, is one in a million. They still dote on Ry, though. Fuck.

I’m the baby of the family. Do I get treated that way? Hell no. They think I was a mistake; I’ve overhead so many of their conversations about me it makes me sick. “Maybe I should have gotten an abortion” from Mom or “We should have put him up for adoption” from Dad—those are the most common and the least hurtful.

At least Ry keeps his damned mouth shut and stays out of my way. My bro might be good with grades and sports and all that shit, but the one time he tried to fight me, I wiped the fucking floor with him. He’s kept his distance ever since.

As far as brothers go, I definitely could’ve ended up with much worse. He’s the quiet, mama boy type that really does get devastated when our mother is even slightly upset with him. It’s fucking disgusting, how much he leans on her.

But it’s okay, I guess. He doesn’t speak to me much. I’ve got no fucking clue what kind of feelings he has about me and I don’t really want to know. As long as he stays out of my life, I’ll stay out of his. It’s worked this fucking far.

The keys hit the table in the kitchen, which is barely twenty feet away from my bedroom door. Fucking tiny ass house. At least we have a house.

But the keys being thrown mean Mom was driving, ‘cuz she always throws them when she’s been driving. There are so many freaking scratches in the table where the keys have hit too hard that plates wobble when they are placed on top of it. Somehow, she manages to toss them in about the same place every fucking time. What a skill that is.

It’s a good thing she drove today, though. When Dad drives, it means she’s in a bad mood. And ten out of ten times, I’m the cause of her bad mood.

Dad won’t deal with shit. He prefers to leave the real job to her. He just goes to Pet Smart and puts shit on the shelves so there’s money to buy food and pay rent. Mom, though, is the manager over there. She’s got to do all the work at home and on the job. No wonder having to deal with all my shit on top of that pisses her off. But I ain’t planning on making shit easy for her, the way she treats me. Fuck that.

But she’s not pissed today. Granted, it’s a Saturday, so it’s not like I could’ve gotten into too much trouble. And it means it’s a Howie day—after they read that scholarship, hopefully I’ll be able to arrange a ride to the park. It isn’t a far walk, but when I can get a ride, I take it.

Getting a ride, though, can be a fucking pain in the ass. That’s because my mom hates Howie. I don’t understand why, ‘cuz she’s the only person I’ve ever met that can’t stand the guy. Everyone else practically worships at the man’s feet. It’s kind of disturbing, but he doesn’t seem to mind, so I don’t say shit about it. But my mom’s disliked him since the first time she met him, despite the fact he turned all his charm on for her. Guess there are some people immune to Howie. Just my luck my mom had to be one of them.

I wait a few minutes, then wrench myself off the bed, away from the fantasy chick on my ceiling. If I ever meet a real girl like that, I’ll flip my shit. I mean, fuck. She’s armed, deadly, and sexy as hell-what kind of idiot would say no to that glorious combination? Fucking no one.

Great. My parents are in the fucking living room, sitting on the sofa like they are about to start making out. Ugh. I shift my weight, trying to decide if I want to talk to them about that scholarship shit or not.

Mom takes the choice away from me, though, ‘cuz she spots me and turns away from my Dad. Just in time, too—they were on the verge of necking before she spotted me. Yuck.

“Jake, what is this?” She leans over the coffee table and grabs the scholarship award off of it, holding it between her thumb and forefinger like she’s afraid it’s going to bite her.

“It’s a fucking scholarship award,” I say. “What the fuck does it look like?”

Her lips tighten into thin lies. I probably shouldn’t be swearing at her, but really? Why the fuck did she ask me such a stupid ass question.

“When did you apply for this scholarship?” she asks.

My jaw clenches at the disdain I hear in her voice. Fuck. “I don’t know. Few months ago, I think.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were applying for scholarships?” Her eyes are full of accusation and betrayal.

“Because,” I say. She wants the truth from me? Fine. But she’s going to have to pry it from me inch by inch. Damn, but she should know by now how fucking stubborn I am.

“We already put money aside for your education at Twindale High. Why would you apply for a scholarship?”

Ahh, fuck. Now the betrayed look makes sense. I got so excited that I finally fucking won something that I completely forgot the type of people my parents are. We’re poor as shit—only a step up from trailer trash because we have our own house—and I hate it. Being poor fucking sucks.

But my parents fucking revel in the shit. They have so much pride about our poverty level it is ridiculous. They want to provide for us—mostly Ry—through their own sweat and blood, without anything they consider a handout. And to them, a scholarship is a fucking handout. Shit. Guess I won’t be getting that ride over to the park anyway.

I jut out my chin. “Because I’m tired of living in this fucking shithole,” I say. I nod toward the award. “That’s what I wrote in my qualifying essay. It’s what won me the goddamned award. At least I fucking won something, for once.”

My mother doesn’t comment on my loser status. Of course not. She doesn’t want to give me the satisfaction of knowing that she thinks I’m a loser, but too late—I already got the memo, Mom. Just spit it the fuck out already.

Instead, her eyes narrow in anger and she practically spits at me. “Fine. If you hate it here so much, I’ll sign the contract that came with the award and you can go live with the strangers you’re so eager to meet. And then you can forget you ever lived here, since you hate it so much.”

I can’t help it—I flinch. Because what she just said was really fucking mean. I guess my parents really do hate me. Fuck. “Fine,” I snap. “Sign the damned papers. I’m going to meet Howie.”

I don’t give her a chance to respond before I’m out the door, slamming it so hard the house rattles. It doesn’t hit me ‘til I’m halfway to the park that I don’t know what kind of contract I just told her to sign. I’m guessing regular school bullshit, so I’m not too worried. I mean, I saw the papers in the envelope with the award, but I didn’t bother to pull them out. That’s all parent shit. And hell. This is one of those rich ass schools. Maybe it’s standard practice for them to come with student contracts. I don’t fucking know. Don’t really care, either.

I get to the park early, which isn’t unusual. Any time I fight with my parents, I storm out of the house. They think I go looking for a fight to cool my head, but the truth is that I leave so I don’t fucking punch their fucking faces in.

I chill at the picnic tables and spend the hour I have to kill before Howie and Jess will show examining all the graffiti on the tops and undersides of the tables. There’s a lot of hearts with two names carved into them—a lot more of the hearts with two names carved into them and one of the two names crossed out. Fucking typical teenage bullshit.

Life isn’t so goddamned simple that you can fall in love, etch your name and your girls in some random wood somewhere and then live happily fucking after. The more shit I see people do for “love” the more I’m convinced I don’t ever want to experience it.

I’d rather be by myself for the rest of my life than get pushed around the way I see other guys pushed around. Fuck that. I ain’t going to let no woman dictate what I can and can’t do. And I ain’t going to tell no woman what she can and can’t do, neither. If I ever do get involved with a chick, she better be able to keep herself occupied when I’m busy, ‘cuz I won’t put up with the whining bullshit I see some of Howie’s friends pull with him.

I’m pulled out of my thoughts when I hear a car pull up into the parking area. The picnic tables are less than twenty yards from the parking lot, but the park is fairly deserted. It isn’t really much of a park. Just a few picnic tables and a walking loop that no one ever uses. On Saturdays, the park gets the most action it sees all year with me, Jess, and Howie hanging out.

The car belongs to Howie’s Dad and I jerk my head at Howie as soon as he gets out of the car. He raises an eyebrow at me and turns back to his Dad. I can’t make out a word he’s saying, of course—he’s too fucking far away—but I’m pretty sure he’s telling his Dad when to pick him up. Howie’s always been the one who decides when our Saturday park days end, because he’s the one who set them up.

It takes them fucking forever to say goodbye. I want to go over there and shake Howie to hurry him up, but I keep myself in check. I don’t get in Howie’s business—fucking oath—and that means not messing with his decisions to do whatever the fuck he wants.

“Hey,” he says, when he finally makes it over to where I’m at. “You get in another fight with your parents?” He says it like he doesn’t care one way or the other whether a fight happened or not. But that’s Howie for you—he’s fucking impossible to read. I never know if he’s genuinely interested or just talking.

“Yeah,” I say, and kick at a pebble I spot near my foot. “My parents are pissed that I applied for that scholarship you suggested.”

“The Aifam one?” Howie asks, and I’m surprised by how intent he is as he waits for my answer.

“Yeah,” I say.

“You get in?” he asks.

I scowl. “Yeah,” I say. “Which is fucking brilliant, but my parents are morons. They think being poor is the best fucking thing in the world, but they are deluded. Fuck. I’m fourteen and I know better than that.”

Howie shrugs, then completely ignores my rant, and continues his own line of questioning. “Did you read the contract for the new students?” he asks.

I do a quick double-take. “What the fuck?” I ask. “How do you know about that shit?”

He smiles at me, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. The smile never reaches Howie’s eyes. Maybe that’s why my mom doesn’t like him. But fuck—who cares? Maybe he’s got shit he doesn’t need other people knowing. “I’m going there, too,” he admits.

“You applied for a scholarship too?” I ask. Suddenly going to Aifam doesn’t seem so bad. If I have a friend at my new school, it will make life a lot fucking simpler.

“No,” Howie says, and it’s so quiet I have to strain to hear him. He looks up at me and smiles again, but this time there’s a sadness to it. “There’s a reason I’ve never invited you to my house, Jake.”

Wait. Aifam Academy costs a million dollars a year for non-scholarship students. I stare at Howie for a long time. “Fuck,” I say. “You’re rich.”

He nods.

“Does anyone know?”

Howie shakes his head. “I didn’t want anyone to know,” he says. “When people know I’m rich, they tend to try and ask me for favors that I don’t want to grant them. So I keep my financial status secret, as much as I can.”

“So why are you telling me?”

He grins at me. “Because we’ll be going to school together next year.”

“Hell yeah,” I say. “Be nice to see a friendly face.”

Howie’s cheer disappears and a serious expression crosses his face. “Jake,” he says. “I got to ask you for a favor.”

Well, fuck. “Okay,” I say, but I’m a bit weirded out. Howie’s never asked me for a favor before—not once, in three years. “What is it?”

He smiles, but it’s a grim smile. “At school next year, remember something for me.”

I stare at him. “Remember what?” I ask. Fuck, I wish people would just ask for something straight out instead of dragging shit out.

“You remember the first day we met?”

“Yeah.”

“You remember me telling you not to expect anything from me?”

I glare at him. “Of course I fucking remember that, but why the hell are you bringing it up now?”

He meets my eyes and the look in his eyes is so strong that I take a step back without thinking about it. “Don’t expect anything from me, Jake. Especially not next year.”

I swallow, throat suddenly going dry. Why the hell is he acting so weird right now? I shake it off—I don’t have time for this shit. “Whatever, Howie. I told you when we met I wouldn’t expect shit from you.”

He smiles at me. “Good. That’s good.” He turns and waves at Jess, who is climbing out of her mom’s car.

“Whatever, Howie. You’re too fucking weird for me sometimes.”

“I aim to please,” he says, mock-bowing to me.

I roll my eyes. “Whatever. Hey, Jess.”

She joins us, pulling cigarettes and a lighter out of her back pocket as soon as her mom is out of the parking lot. “Hey guys. What’s up?”

I tell her about the scholarship. She’s properly impressed, the way my parents should have been. Fuck. Jess should have been my sister.

When she directs her gaze at Howie, he talks—but he deflects, like usual. “Nothing is happening with me. How about you, Jess? Any new projects?”

Jess scowls at him, but relents and nods sharply. “Yeah. I found a new girl who is desperate for a hit, so I’m pretty sure I can string her along for a couple weeks.”

Yeah… I might not have mentioned this, but Jess deals coke and heroin without batting an eye and she has no issue getting people so addicted to the shit that they come to her begging for a hit. By that time, she’s basically robbed them blind.

So, you see, my issue with drugs has a lot to do with Jess. She’s not an addict herself—she takes a hit every so often to make sure the shit she’s getting is pure, but that’s it. She has more fun stringing addicts along, but since she knows what dealers do to addicts, she refuses to let herself get addicted herself.

I’ve asked her, once or twice, if she doesn’t feel like she is dehumanizing herself by harming all these innocent girls. But those conversations never go well, because she doesn’t believe the truly innocent ever do drugs and she also hates every girl in the world except her two best girlfriends.

It bothers me when Jess and Howie start talking about Jess’s latest victim like the girl is no more than a piece of meat, but I never let that shit show. I mean, I’m supposed to be the tough one amongst us. If I said something about being disturbed by Jess stringing a drug addict along, she’d laugh in my fucking face.

I don’t know what Howie would do, but I never know what Howie will do. I swear, I never feel surefooted around him. I feel like I should, but I never do. And I don’t know if Howie wants it that way or not, because I can’t get a proper read on the guy. And that takes fucking skill. It’s been three years since I met the fucker and I’ve hung out with him every Saturday for all three years. And I still can’t make heads or tails of his personality. I can’t tell if he’s a complete asshole, like me, who just hides it really well, or if he really is just a genuinely nice person. Fuck. I don’t like not being able to tell, but Howie is fun to be around. Seriously, I’ll take the lack of surefootedness over being bored senseless by myself any fucking day of the week.

“You guys have any plans for summer vacation?” Jess asks.

I snort. “In case you forgot, sweetheart, my family is poor as shit. I’m lucky if I get to eat in the summer. Forget taking a vacation.”

Jess scowls at me. She hates it when I call her sweetheart. “Fine. You don’t have to be an asshole all the time, Jake. It was just a question.”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, and you know better than to ask shit like that.”

Jess smirks. “Just checking.”

I sigh. I want to smack her, but I don’t, because she’s just being Jess. She has this weird habit of ‘checking’ to see if I am actually Jake or not. I don’t know who the fuck else she thinks I could be, but it seems to make her happy, so whatever. She does the same shit to Howie, but I don’t know how she manages to tell whether it’s really him or not, since she says the same shit every time.

“Have you seen Malignant?” she asks, and this time it’s to Howie.

Howie narrows his eyes at Jess and frowns. “It isn’t time.”

It’s been the same fucking question with the same answer for the last three goddamned years. I want to know what the fuck it means, but I am not curious enough to try and force an answer from either of them. If I did, Jess would bitch slap me and then stop talking to me for a month. Howie would—well, I couldn’t ask Howie anyway. Fucking oath.

The two of them start talking about shit again and I sort of halfway-listen as I try to figure out why Howie brought up sixth grade to me. I mean, yeah, he told me not to expect anything out of him. And I don’t. I mean, it’s pretty hard to expect shit from someone I don’t know very well.

But I do consider him to be one of my close friends. Is that what he meant? Was he trying to warn me about something? I mean, I get that we’ll be going to the same school next year. But we’re friends, right? Doesn’t that mean it is okay for me to be excited to be going to the same place as him?

Or is that what he’s talking about it? Does he not want me to expect friendship from him? Fuck. If that’s what he means, what does that mean about Aifam? I remember the contract that seemed out of place to me. Fuck. I hurriedly make my goodbyes and take off running for my house. What the fuck did I agree to let my mother sign me up for?


	3. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

 

I make it about half a mile before my legs give out and I’m forced to slow to a walk. Fuck. I know better than to run like that- I ain’t got the stamina for that shit.

Fighting’s different than running. I could do that shit all night long, but the sweat I’d break from doing that would be worth the fucking effort. Running ain’t. It’s that fucking simple.

I don’t know why I broke out running like that in the first fucking place. I mean, yeah, okay, it was fucking weird that Howie said that shit to me, but it ain’t that big a fucking deal. Howie’s always saying weird ass shit.

Fuck. I’m torn. I can’t go back to the park ‘cuz I already said I was done hanging out with them for the day and going back would just look fucking pathetic. But I don’t want to go home, either.

With my luck, my parents will be post-coital on the fucking couch and I sure as shit don’t want to see that. Well, fuck. I guess I’ll just go in the back door—I don’t want to deal with anymore of their shit today and I need to get a look at that fucking scholarship contract.

If it’s as weird as I think it is, after Howie’s weird ass shit, I’ll just tear it up. Fuck attending school with him. I kick a rock, sending it flying, and smirk at the wounded yelp of the puppy it hits. Good fucking riddance. Fucking creepy ass dogs. Fuck. I want to go to school with Howie, but I’m not sure about that fucking contract.

Whatever. I walk in the back door and peek into the living room. My parents are nowhere to be found. Thank fuck. I grab the contract my mom left on the coffee table and beeline to my room. Now I can see what the fuck this contract shit is all about.

I sit on the edge of the bed and skim the first page. It all looks like normal shit to me, but the contract is pretty fucking thick. I flip to one of the middle pages. Parking rules. Fuck. I don’t care about that shit. My parents can’t even afford two cars for themselves. There ain’t no fucking way they’d buy me a car, anyway. Ry, maybe.

I flip back two pages. Holidays. I scowl. Why was Howie acting so weird? This contract just seems like a fucking school handbook. Whatever. I glance down the page and—does it really say that? Fuck yeah.

It reads “Students will spend holidays on campus. Due to the prestige afforded Aifam Academy, no family members will be allowed access to the grounds.”

That means I don’t have to spend Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, New Year’s, or Easter with my fucking parents. I won’t have to try to get along with them—and fail—for yet another year. There will be no disappointment in their eyes when they realize that I am just as much of a fuck-up as they think I am.

Fuck. It feels like Christmas has come really fucking early this year, because being forced to spend my holidays away from my family is about the best fucking present I could ask for.

Granted, it is a little fucking weird that the school doesn’t allow family members on the grounds, but whatever. If it’s as prestigious as it sounds, then going to Aifam Academy will be the best fucking thing I’ve ever done in my life.

I toss the contract onto the table next to my bed and chill the fuck out, laying back so I can stare at the beautiful chick on my ceiling. I’ve learned all I want to know from that contract-my mom’s signature on the last page means I’m fucking good to go.

Spending another four years with Howie at my side will be pretty fucking awesome. I mean, I thought we were going to the same high school anyway. I never thought that Howie nudged me toward that scholarship application because he would be attending a school other than Twindale High.

But whatever. I can worry about weird shit later. Graduation’s at the end of the month. I bet my parents are surprised I’m going to be graduating with the same class I started with. No secret around here that they think I’m a fucking dumbass.

My grades are fine. A’s and B’s, really, with only a couple C’s here and there. It’s not like I’m fucking failing. But if I don’t maintain a fucking A average in all my classes, I’m not good enough. Fuck them. I’m not Ryan.

Could I get all A’s? Fuck yeah. But I don’t care that fucking much about school. It’s just fucking busywork. Anyone can read a textbook and learn some dates, but who the fuck is going to need that? Maybe a politician or some shit, but I ain’t got no plans to go down that path.

No, I’m pretty fucking set on what I’m going to do. When I start this new school next year, I’ll find their wrestling team and join them. Closest sport to fighting there is. And then I’ll work my ass off. Because my plan’s to get seen by a wrestling scout and recruited to go pro. I ain’t wrestled a day in my life, if we’re talking ‘bout the kind of wrestling that requires rules. But I been in enough fucking fights that I’m sure I can adapt pretty fucking quickly.

And I won’t have to deal with my parents for four fucking years. It will be like a fucking dream vacation. I thought it was a bit of a weird thing for a school to do when I read about it, but it seems pretty fucking cool. Instead of one of those boarding schools that sends the kids home for the summer, Aifam Academy provides summer housing. There ain’t no fucking way I’m leaving that place to come back to this shithole during summer.

But I am a little apprehensive. I mean, fuck. How many scholarships do they give out each year? Am I the only one? Am I going to be surrounded by an army of rich fuckers making fun of me for being on scholarship? Fuck, I’ve been watching too damned many movies again.

Damn. It’s already six in the fucking evening. Mom should be starting dinner soon. I hope she doesn’t force me to eat with the family tonight. I get that she thinks family time is important, but when all she does is stare at me over her food like she can’t believe I came out of her, it makes me fucking sick. I don’t want to deal with that shit.

I don’t know why my parents hate me so goddamned much anyway. It’s just always been this way. Earliest thing I remember is being scolded when I was three every time I tried to play with my brother when he got new toys. My parents have been pushing me into corners and onto the fucking sidelines since I was a fucking toddler. What did I ever do to deserve that shit?       

The worst thing, though, is that they don’t get why I’m so fucking angry all the time. They think I’m a violent kid who never thinks of anything but fucking fighting. And, okay, I do love to fucking fight. But it ain’t all of who I am. I wouldn’t have a poster in my room with the words “No Price Too High for Honor” if all I cared to do was sink my fist into the nearest person’s face.

I have some fucking standards. My parents don’t think so. I see that in their eyes every fucking time they look at me. But I haven’t ever fucking hit one of them, even though I itch to every time they look at me like I’m a fucking worthless piece of scum instead of their goddamned son.

Fuck. I’m not a nice person, by anyone’s standards, but that’s not my fucking fault. It’s my parents. Shove a kid in a corner, make them fend for themselves for 14 fucking years, and see what happens—you get me.

First time I ever got in a fight, I was eight years old. Eight. I didn’t know, back then, that fighting could get me in trouble. I was just tired of this stupid ass kid, Joey, trying to push me around all the fucking time.

I’d been putting up with his shit for _months_ before it came down to our fists. Every day, he’d make spitballs and shoot them at me. In every fucking class, because we shared every single one. During recess, he’d knock me off swings, push me off the monkey bars, and kick me off jungle gyms. I was getting fucking tired of landing in the dirt.

And I decided, one day, that I’d had e-fucking-nough of his shit. So when he tried to push me off the swing, I jumped off it before he got the chance. Then, before he could recover from the fact I hadn’t just fallen to the ground like usual, I turned around and smashed my fist into his face.

It hurt like hell when my hand hit his nose, but the crunch I heard? Man, I still remember the way that made me feel. Satisfied. Vindicated. Vicious happiness that the person who’d been pushing me into the dirt for months had something of his own to fucking cry about.

And he did cry about it. Extensively. To every fucking teacher we had. The principal called my Mom at work and she had to leave in the middle of her shift to come take me home. That was the first time she ever told me she was disappointed in me. She didn’t even let me tell my fucking side of the story.

And I tried to tell her. Hell, I did tell her. Over and over again. I told her my side of things when she picked me up from school. I told her when we were driving to the house. I told her after she lectured me about fighting and told me she was disappointed in me. I told her day after day after day for two weeks straight before I realized that she didn’t give a shit about my side of the story. All that mattered to her was that I’d cost her money and forced her to leave her job to take care of me. And she fucking hated that.

That was when I started noticing that she ignored me except when a teacher said they were concerned about my grades. And then she’d give me that same fucking look she’d given me when she’d lectured me about fighting and tell me how disappointed she was that I couldn’t keep my grades up, like Ry.

I started to hate Ry because of her. Nothing I did was ever fucking good enough for her, but Ry was fucking perfect all the time. And I can admit it, I was fucking jealous. Hell, I was eight years old. I wanted to know what it felt like to come home and run straight into my mom’s arms and feel welcome there.

So I started trying harder and harder in school, pulling my grades up as high as I could manage. But it didn’t matter; even the year I had all A’s in my classes didn’t count with her. It was always “Ry did better,” or “Ry was top of his class. Why aren’t you?” Bullshit like that, all the time, every single time a report card came home. I started to fucking dread those days, because I knew it was just a matter of time before she found something that I’d done wrong.

I was ten by the time I accepted that my mom wasn’t ever going to treat me like a son. I was just a fucking mouth to feed and a waste of space at the table. She didn’t give a shit if I got injured or if I got sick—hell, if I had to stay home from school because I had a fever, she’d get pissed at me for that. Like she expected me to be able to turn the sick on and off like a fucking robot or some shit.

I stopped expecting her to greet me when I got home from school the way she did Ry. And when Ry started high school, she stopped waking me up to get ready for school, because his school didn’t start ‘til later. So I learned pretty fucking fast how to set my own alarm clock and how to make my own breakfast.

Hell—I’ve been living ‘on my own’ for years. My parents don’t try to set rules for me. I have to fight to get them to pick me up from school and when I fail at that, I have to walk or grab a ride from Jess. My parents virtually ignore me.

The only time that changes is during the holidays. But that’s because they feel fucking obligated because I’m blood and that means something to them. I don’t know what it fucking means though, because it’s pretty fucking obvious that they wish I weren’t related to them.

They buy me two items for Christmas every year and a single thing for my birthday and that’s it. I have to tell them a week before each exactly what I want them to buy and that’s what they get, whether they disapprove of the choice or not. The fact I managed to wrangle my mom into agreeing to allow me to decorate my room for my 12th birthday is a fucking miracle.

To get it looking the way it is now, I had to give up two years of any gifts at all. So I got nothing for my 13th or 14th birthdays and nothing for those two Christmases. Pretty fucking sad, having to fight that hard to get a room painted with a few posters on it.

But it was after my 10th birthday that I started getting in fights. Someone at school would make the mistake of laughing at me and I’d lay them out flat. Another person would sniff at me, like I was below them, and I’d fucking deck them. I was done letting people make me feel like I was worthless.

I got hauled into the principal’s office so fucking often I had a chair with my name on it—literally. I wrote it there with a Sharpie one day when I was waiting for the principal to get off the fucking phone with my mom for the 3rd time in a week.

It was overhearing the conversation between them when my mom came to pick me up that made me realize I needed to take the fighting somewhere besides school. Because the principal told her that it was starting to look like I was going to be one of those kids who starts a fight at school every day for no reason other than fighting. And he said that if that started happening, he’d have to expel me.

And that straightened me out pretty fucking fast. My parents would have a legitimate reason to be fucking disappointed with me if I got myself expelled. So I stopped fighting at school—except for the times when another kid hit me first. And when those fights happened, I made fucking sure that people were around who’d seen the other guy throw the first punch, so that I could claim self-defense with legitimate back-up. The principal didn’t like it, and my mom still got called, but he wouldn’t expel me for defending myself.

But my anger didn’t just go away. Hell, my anger is what keeps me fucking going. Instead of fighting at school, I started walking to parks and sports fields where other kids were hanging out. As soon as they said something to me—and they always said something—I’d be on them in a flash.

I fought at certain parks so often kids started to gather just to fucking watch—and to fucking challenge me. But that was fucking fine with me, because, win or lose, I was fucking fighting _someone._

And there is absolutely fucking nothing in this world that compares to the heart-pounding adrenaline of a real fucking fight. You never really know where the next blow is going to come from and you always— _always—_ taste your own blood before a fight ends. And that feeling, knowing that you’re taking your life into your own hands every time you fight…it’s like flirting with the possibility of death. And it’s terrifying and fucking glorious at the same goddamned time.

There’s no thrill like the thrill of a good fucking fight. It didn’t take long, after I started drawing crowds at parks, for me to gain a pretty nasty reputation. Some of the kids from my school came to the park to challenge me and lost; that’s where the nasty rumors about me came from.

But the novelty of the fighting wore off pretty quickly for most of the spectators and the people that used to visit the parks before I started looking for fights stopped coming. They were too afraid of me.

Don’t get me wrong, I still go the parks. Once a week, like clockwork, on Wednesday nights. Wednesday is a day meant for fucking fighting. And I always have challengers. Three or four show up, sometimes more. Some nights, I fight them one on one. Other nights, I fight them one versus group. It depends on whether I want to fight to win or whether I want to fight just to feel the thrill of it. Those fights only have one rule: No broken bones. Everything else is fair game.

No one complains about those rules, though, because no one wants to give me the chance to break one of their bones. And since there aren’t many people who can best me in a fight, it’s a pretty safe bet that the rule is more for their sake than mine.

 


	4. Chapter Six through Twelve

Chapter Six

         

“Jake!” My mom’s yell brings me out of my thoughts and I scramble into the kitchen. I’ve been able to smell her awesome food cooking for the last twenty minutes and I am fucking starving. My mom and I don’t get along well, that’s for sure, but I love her fucking cooking. She could make a meal for a fucking king out of bread and butter if she had to.

          I don’t fucking know where she picked that up from, either. Neither one of my grandparents can cook to save their goddamned lives. Grandma burns water, for fuck’s sake, and Granddad don’t even know how to turn a fucking stove on. But Mom, man. She cooks like it’s going out of style

          If I miss anything when I start this new school, it’s going to be her fucking cooking. Ain’t going to be her, that’s for damned sure. I slid into my seat at the table and dare her with my eyes to say something fucking else to me tonight about the scholarship.

          She purses her lips, dishes out a hunk of meat and potatoes onto my plate, and turns to Ry when he walks in from the garage. By the look of him, he’s been trying to tinker with the car with dad’s help. Dad don’t do nothing fucking else, but he can fix the car when it breaks. Maybe that’s why my parents’ marriage has lasted this fucking long.

          Ry smiles at Mom and goes to the sink to wash his hands. He’s got grease fucking everywhere. It’s on his clothes, in his hair, and he’s streaking it across the fucking floor like it don’t mean shit that Mom just mopped and waxed the floor last fucking weekend. And Mom doesn’t even snap at him. She just flashes him a smile and gives him a big fucking helping of food when he sits down at the table.

          A flash of irritation steals over me. Who the fuck does Ry think he is, sitting down at a table all covered with grease? It ain’t sanitary, for one fucking thing, and it’s fucking rude, for another. I mean, yeah, I’m an asshole, and I’m rude as hell all the time, but at least I got some fucking standards. “What the hell you’d do, Ry?” I ask. “Swim in the fucking car grease?”

          He looks at me, but he doesn’t really—his eyes slid right off me to the side. He hasn’t met my fucking eyes in years; not since I wiped the floor with him the one time he tried to fucking fight me. “Not that it’s any of your business,” he says, and his voice is tight, like he wants to say something mean but doesn’t because Mom’s right in front of us. “But I was under the car helping Dad fix the brake lines.”

          I snort. “You could’ve at least taken your goddamned shoes off,” I say. “Or did you forget that Mom just waxed the goddamn floor last week?”

          He shifts uncomfortably in his chair and doesn’t respond to me. But he does glance at Mom out of the corner of his eye, like he’s uneasy about what she’s going to say to him now that I’ve pointed out the fucking obvious thing he’s done wrong.

          She looks at me, then Ry, and shrugs, a small smile playing on her lips. “I was planning on re-waxing it tomorrow anyway,” she says. “I noticed earlier that I missed a few spots here and there and I wanted to patch it up. Now I just have a reason to make sure I get it done.” She leans down and plants a soft kiss on Ry’s hair.

          I want to fucking barf. She had no fucking plans to wax the floor again. She only does that shit once a fucking month. Not every fucking weekend. But since Ry’s the one who fucked it up, she doesn’t say a goddamned word to him about it. You can bet your ass off that if I tried to come in the house looking like that, she’d force me to hose off in the back yard before she’d let me take a step inside. She’s always fucking playing favorites.

          But whatever. I only got to put up with this shit for another couple months and then I can get the fuck out of this shithole. I’ll even get to spend four years away from my family so I don’t got to spend every fucking meal I eat trying not to get sick as I watch my mother act like Ry’s a fucking five year old who can’t help himself.

          Dad comes in. Unlike Ry, he’s hosed himself off in the back yard, like my brother should have fucking done. Granted, my dad wouldn’t ever walk in a house matted with fucking grease anyway—he’s got better sense than that. My dad doesn’t say much to me or to Ry—the only fucking person he talks to is our Mom.

          He’s like a fucking non-existent person in the house. He doesn’t try and keep me or Ry in line; he never has. He just comes in for dinner every day and eats with us and then he goes to the room he shares with my mom and doesn’t ever fucking come out of it. I’ve never had a single conversation with my dad that was more than two fucking syllables long.

          I don’t know why he’s like that either; obviously, he doesn’t fucking talk to me. But he does talk to Ry. I mean, he’s showing my fucking brother how to fix cars and shit. He obviously cares for his elder son, but doesn’t give a fuck about me. I don’t get it; but then again, I don’t get a lot of shit my parents do.

          Dad takes his seat and Mom dishes out his helping, then she dumps the rest on her plate and carries the pot to the sink and fills it with water before she comes back. She sits down and picks up her fork. That’s the only fucking cue I need, so I dig in to my meat and potatoes and shovel the food down my throat so fast it feels like it’s burning a hole in my throat.

          But there ain’t no fucking way I am going to sit at this goddamned table any longer than I have to. My parents fucking hate me. My brother doesn’t even acknowledge me half the time, so I’m guessing he hates me just as fucking much as they do. And I ain’t got no warm and fuzzy feelings left for none of them. Not since they’ve been treating me like a fucking dog since I was eight years old.

          I can’t believe my mom tried to spout that fucking shit at me earlier about going to live with strangers. I got a better chance at being liked by complete fucking strangers than my own fucking family. How do you like that? My family makes me fucking miserable. There can’t be any-fucking-thing that’s worse than this shit.

          Well, at least I ain’t got to deal with no church bullshit. My parents aren’t Christian and they didn’t try to raise me that way, thank fuck. I ain’t got no use for a religion that tries to teach you that every fucking human being is born evil and needs to be saved for no goddamned reason. I ain’t never gone to church a day in my life and I’m never going to. Fuck that. I’d rather fight.

          At least I know fighting’s fucking real. Ain’t no mistaking the way it feels when my fist hits someone’s face—agony and ecstasy all rolled into one. Show me a religion that can give you both at the same fucking time and then maybe I might show some fucking interested. But I’ve seen all the Jesus freaks running around my school to last me a fucking life time.

          All they do is pull out that stupid fucking book and pick a line they think will suit whatever they have decided is the right thing to do. Fuck that. If you have to consult a fucking book to know what fucking action to take, then you ain’t got no fucking sense of honor any-fucking-way.

          At least I can say my parents done that much for me. Though, of course, they didn’t fucking do it on purpose. They just both happen to be atheists and never gave a single fucking thought to whether or not they should teach me and Ry about religion at all.

          That’s fine by me. I’m better off making my own decisions anyway. At least that way I fucking know the only person I got to answer to is my fucking self. I ain’t got no use for any-fucking-body—human OR god—who is going to fucking judge me without knowing me. No fucking way. I’m the only person who knows whether my actions are any fucking good or not; I ain’t going to find the answer to that shit in any fucking book, no matter what the Jesus freaks at school keep trying to shove down everybody’s throats.

          At least they leave me the fuck alone. I guess being a mean-ass fighter automatically disqualifies me in their eyes. Good. That’s one thing I’m fucking glad to be excluded from. I don’t need to be converted and they can take their fucking innocent act and shove it up their ass. All the Jesus freaks I’ve seen can’t step up and admit when they’ve done shit wrong; they’ll blame it on the fucking devil or some fucking bullshit like that. It pisses me the fuck off. If you do something, fucking own it. If you can’t fucking own it, don’t do it in the first goddamned place. It is that fucking simple.

          I finish eating in five minutes. Like I said, I ain’t interested in another fucking lecture tonight. Mom gives me her _I am so disappointed in you. Why can’t you be more like your brother_ look that I get every fucking time I eat dinner at the table with them. You think she would’ve learned by now that I ain’t got no fucking interest in acting like Ry.

          I’m my own fucking person and if she doesn’t want to respect that, then fine. I’ll get the fuck out of her life and start making shit happen for myself. At least with this scholarship to Aifam, I get that fucking opportunity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

          Graduation passes and summer flies by. Maybe for other people these things are super important, but I can’t fucking care less. Graduation doesn’t mean shit except another step closer to the time I can get away from my fucking family. It’s not like they do anything special for me, either.

          Not like Ry’s graduation, where it was one of the biggest events of the fucking year. When he graduated from high school, our parents invited the entire fucking family to come see it. And our family ain’t exactly small. My mom might be an only child, but my dad definitely isn’t. He’s got six brothers and eight sisters. It’s fucking ridiculous.

          I’m glad I don’t have to remember all their goddamned names. My parents don’t expect me to be anything but a loser, so I get to skip out on all the genealogy lessons. I got more fucking cousins than I can keep up with and none of them like me. It’s all right, though, cuz I don’t like none of them fuckers either.

          But all my aunts and uncles and cousins came down to see Ry’s graduation. They took up two whole fucking rows of the bleachers in the gym; it probably would’ve worked out better if my parents had gotten the school to cord a corner of the gym off for them. It was fucking embarrassing to have a whole section of the bleachers occupied by family. I’m sure Ry thought the same fucking thing, but he’s too much of a fucking suck-up to ever say anything like that to our parents’ faces.

          I had to fucking beg Jess to come rescue me from the family nightmare. My parents decided to try and jam as many of my aunts and uncles and cousins as they could into our tiny ass house. It didn’t fucking work; of course. It barely fucking manages to hold the four of us that live there.

          Luckily, Jess’s mom is pretty fucking cool and she picked me up and let me spend the weekend over there. I had to sleep on the couch, of course, because it’s not right for girls and boys to share a room when they aren’t dating. I didn’t want to share a room with Jess anyway. I didn’t like her that way even if her mom thought I did. But hey, at least her mom was cool enough to let me escape my goddamned ridiculous family while they were in town celebrating Ry’s graduation.

          Did those same family members come to town for my graduation? Hell no. I doubt my parents even fucking mentioned it to them, considering how much they hate me. I’m such a fucking disappoint to them—that I graduated from middle school doesn’t mean shit to them in light of all the ways I’ve fucked their lives up. I can’t even count how many times I’ve heard them say shit like that—like I’m the one responsible for their inability to get better fucking jobs or make more fucking money.

          Maybe if the two of them would stop acting so goddamned proud of being poor and actually try and realize that being poor fucking sucks they’d stop giving me those goddamned looks. Maybe they’d stop blaming me for all the fucking drama in their lives. I snort. Yeah right. They’ll be blaming me for all their drama even when I get out of this fucking hellhole. I’m the perfect fucking scapegoat to them. I might as well have been born with the word “scapegoat” tattooed onto my goddamned forehead. Maybe then it wouldn’t have hurt so much when my parents started treating me like shit. But who fucking knows?

          What I do know is that waiting around in this fucking airport terminal for my flight to be called is really fucking boring. I got here at eight am and my flight doesn’t leave ‘til noon. But I had to get here that fucking early because if I refused to let my mom drop me off on her way to work I would have had to fucking walk. And then I would’ve missed my flight, because there ain’t no fucking way I can walk thirty miles in four hours. Ain’t no fucking way I’d tried that shit either.

          I think my mom was holding out hope or something that I’d decide not to go to Aifam. For the last week she’s been asking me shit about the scholarship every fucking time she’s seen me. If I didn’t know better, I’d think maybe she actually cared and wanted me to stay around. But I’m not that fucking dumb. Yeah, she wants me to stay, but not because she gives a shit about me. All she fucking wants is someone she can use as a goddamn punching bag for the next four years. She won’t do that shit to Dad or to Ry—just me. And I’m taking myself out of her fucking reach, so that’s got to be pissing her off.

          Good. Let her be pissed. I’m tired of being the person who has to deal with being kicked around at home all the goddamned time. Maybe mom won’t be able to handle the stress of not having a human punching bag at home and she’ll start taking the shit out on Ry for once. I doubt it, but it’s at least fucking amusing to think about.

          But she stopped giving me those fucking weird ass looks the day I got the plane ticket in the mail. I think seeing it made her realize that I was fucking serious about getting the fuck away from her and the rest of them. Maybe she was in denial or something, but fuck. Seeing the plane ticket –you’d think a parent who was losing a kid for four years would cry or some shit—but no, she just locked her fucking jaw and said, “Well, I hope you’re happy at that new fancy school of yours.”

          I didn’t let her get the last word, though. Fuck that. She’s been getting the last word all my life. “I’m sure I will be,” I said. “Any place is better than this goddamned place.”

          “At least I gave you a place to live,” she snapped.

          “Yeah?” I said, moving inside her personal bubble and leaning down until I was staring her straight in the eye, our foreheads practically touching. “But you never gave me a fucking family, _Mom._ So thanks for the board, but good fucking riddance. All you’ve ever done is treat me like shit. Give me one fucking reason I should stay here instead of going to a place where the people will at least treat me like I’m a goddamned human being instead of a fucking dog. Can you do that?”

          She flinched, which made me feel both awful and vindicated at the same fucking time. I waited five fucking minutes before she answered me. “No,” she said. “I can’t give you a good reason.”

          “Then I’m going to the fucking school and I need a fucking ride to the airport on Friday.”

          She agreed to take me to the airport and then stopped trying to speak to me at all after that. Which suited me just fucking fine.

          And for the first time in my life, I got the last fucking word in with her. It means I can got to Aifam Academy and try and forget that all the shit that has happened to me ever existed. I can start with a clean fucking slate, because the only fucking person that even knows my name at that school is Howie. And Howie doesn’t spread rumors about people.

          Which is actually kind of surprising, considering how much the guy knows about fucking everyone. He could cause some serious fucking shit if he ever decided to drop a word here or there; but he’s too goddamned nice for that. He’s friends with fucking everybody on the planet. If I ever meet a person who Howie hates, I’m going to fucking run in the opposite direction. ‘Cuz if I don’t scare Howie like I scare the other people around me (minus Jess, of course, ‘cuz she ain’t afraid of me either) then I’m not sure I want to know what kind of people do scare him.

          I sigh and pick up a Sports Illustrated magazine and thumb through it. Man, waiting for my fucking flight is such a goddamned pain. I’m so fucking bored I can barely stand it. And the flight itself is eight hours. I’ve never been on a plane before, so I’m a bit nervous. Alright. I lied. I’m fucking terrified. What if I have a bad reaction to being off the ground? I ain’t never been that goddamned high up in my life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eight

 

My flight number is finally fucking called and I get in line with the rest of the people boarding. I don’t know shit about airports, but I can read the fucking signs that are EVERYWHERE. I mean, honestly, seeing so many signs that scream directions in very bold, very large font kinda pisses me off, because it makes me feel like a fucking moron. But it relieves me at the same damned time, because it means I ain’t got to go up to people and ask where the fuck I’m going. So I’m pissed off because the signs make me feel like a moron and help me at the same fucking time. I don’t like that shit at all.

I get in the line going to my plane and just follow the rest of the group. It’s pretty easy to figure shit out when everyone is doing the same damn thing. I hand my ticket to the person who’s supposed to get it and she doesn’t even try to make conversation with me. I look too damned mean for that.

Granted, I made sure I looked mean when I left my house this morning, ‘cuz I don’t want to be hassled by anyone. Not so mean people are going to look at me and think I’m carrying a weapon—just mean enough so people will stay the fuck away from me. Mean enough that people won’t open their mouth and try to make small talk. I ain’t got the fucking stomach for that shit.

Especially since I don’t fucking know how my stomach’s going to handle this plane ride. At least I don’t have to worry about a lot of luggage **.** Since my family is so fucking poor, I only have a carry-on with clothes in it. I didn’t really need to bring much with me anyway. As far as I know, the school will have a fucking dress code and require uniforms that they’ll provide. Ain’t no way I got in on a scholarship for them just to tell me I got to buy my own uniforms and shit.

So I packed the four best outfits I own, my pajamas, and my own pillow. It’s one of those small square pillows that people tend to use as couch pillows, but I use it to sleep on. It’s black and I don’t have to deal with the hassle of a pillowcase, so it’s a fucking win-win. My outfits are pretty much all the same thing. Black jeans with lots of fucking pockets, but not the kind that the Goth kids buy at Hot Topic. These are more like military surplus pants, just sheer black instead of camouflage-colored.

I fucking love my pants. I managed to find them at the Salvation Army during the summer and hassled my mom into buying them for me. She didn’t want to do it, but I talked her into it when I pointed out she wouldn’t have to buy me another fucking thing for four goddamned years. After that, she bought all the shit I wanted her to get me for my new school.

And these pants, man. They are fucking awesome. They have a dozen pockets each and they are fucking deep-ass pockets. And they’re loose enough I can fight in them without any trouble. On top of that, they look fucking sleek. I don’t care what people say about our military, but they know how to make durable fucking clothing and these pants are ridiculously comfortable.

The shirts I got to go with them aren’t nearly as cool. They’re just plain black t-shirts. No logos, no designs, just black. Looking at me someone might mistake me as a loser Goth kid, but the black clothes I wear ain’t got shit to do with them fuckers.

I’ve been wearing black clothes since I started fighting, cuz I learned real fucking quick that black clothes are the only ones I can get blood on without having people ask me too many fucking questions. And sure, red hides blood better than black, but I’d stand out way too fucking much if I wore all red all the time. No one thinks too much about another kid walking around in all black clothes. They probably think I’m a fucking loser Goth kid who’s depressed and suicidal and writes bad fucking poetry complaining about life. That’s fucking fine with me. I don’t need people knowing my fucking business.

The line I’m in finally fucking moves and we get to get on the actual plane. I try not to, but my step falters a little when I see the fucking size of the plane I have to get on. Fucking hell. I mean, I knew planes were big, but fuck. It’s fucking enormous. I bet it weighs a fucking ton, too. How the hell does it stay in the fucking sky?

I want to walk around it to get a deeper appreciation for how big the fucking plane actually is, but I’m not the last person in line, and the person behind me has to pull up short to keep from running smack into me. That’s fine; the commotion brings me out of the stupefied awe I’m feeling and I get on the plane like I never fucking stopped to stare at a machine.

I check my ticket stub and find the seat that matches it **.** Great. Just my luck to get seated beside an entire fucking family. It’s like the world’s trying to rub my face in the fact I’m leaving all my relatives behind me. I don’t know if you can hear me, world, but I’m fucking _glad_ to get rid of those assholes.

I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing yet, seeing as it is the first time I’ve ever fucking flown, but I got the aisle seat. I watched the people that boarded in front of me toss luggage into overhead compartments, so I reach up and find the clasp to undo it, planning to toss my carry-on into it. But the fucking compartment is jammed almost completely to the brim. I resist the urge to glare at the family I have to share breathing space with for the next eight fucking hours and instead manage to find a way to sandwich my bag into the tiny space remaining. Goddammit, why does this family have to have so much fucking luggage?

I sit down in the aisle seat and stare straight ahead. My plan is to ignore the fuckers for the entire plane ride. I’ve never been on a plane in my life and on top of that I got to sit beside a group of people whose very presence is going to torture me. Fuck. I should’ve found a way to get a first class plane ticket from the school instead of this coach bullshit.

Not that I know anything about fucking first class sections in planes. Hell, I don’t even know if this plane has one. It’s not like I researched the damn things before I decided to get on one. I’m not that fucking interested in mundane shit like that. Maybe I should’ve looked to see if I could’ve reserved a private seat, though. Fuck.

The family beside me isn’t making any effort to be quiet and it’s only when the stewardess picks up a mic and starts talking that they finally stop fucking talking. Even if it’s only for a minute or two, I am fucking glad that I get a little bit of relief from their voices.

“We’ll be taking off in a couple minutes, folks,” the stewardess says, and I swear listening to her talk is like watching one of those crappy horror films that starts out on a fucking plane. “Please buckle your seatbelts and prepare for some slight turbulence as we ascend.”

Yeah fucking right. That’s what the stewardesses in the movies say right before the pilot takes off and flies into the worst fucking storm seen in two centuries. I buckle my seatbelt and grip the arms of my chair as tightly as I can- I can feel the fucking blood flow being cut off and I know without checking that my fingertips have to be pasty fucking white by now.

And then the plan takes off and I am suddenly very fucking glad that I let Ry talk me into taking a pill for motion sickness before I left this morning. He didn’t tell me goodbye; he just walked into my fucking room and slapped a pill into my hand. “Take this,” he said. When I asked why, he gave me a look like I was a fucking idiot and said, “Because you get motion sick on planes, you moron.”

He left before I could ask him how he knew I got motion sick on planes when I’d never fucking been on another plane in my goddamned life, but right now I’m just glad he fucking knew about it and told me. Even with the pill doing its work, I feel a little fucking queasy.

I’m suddenly really fucking aware of how away the ground is from me and I close my eyes and take a few breaths to try and keep myself from throwing myself at the back of the plane in sheer panic. Fuck. I want to be on the ground so bad I can’t stop shaking. My fingers are digging so deeply into my palms that I can feel the fucking blood pooling in the center of them, but I’ll be _damned_ before I ask for help from any of these fucking people. There ain’t no way I’m going to let my first plane ride end with me being fucking humiliated.

The turbulence of the take-off stops abruptly and my stomach lurches hard as the plane settles into a smooth glide. It takes a few fucking minutes, but I manage to get myself off the edge of a goddamned panic attack. Now that the plane is flying straight and smooth, I’m not feeling like I need to get back to the fucking ground _now_ like I was during the ascent. Fuck. It’s a good fucking thing I didn’t end up with the window seat. I’m pretty fucking sure I wouldn’t have been able to handle that shit at all.

But at least I got one more mystery in my life fucking solved. I ain’t afraid of flying—cuz this smooth glide is fucking glorious; it’s so damned peaceful I’m pretty fucking sure I’m going to fall asleep for the duration of the ride—it’s the taking off that freaks me out. Which probably means the landing is going to be just as fucking bad, but since I managed to ride out the take-off, I’m pretty fucking sure I can ride out the landing, too.

This family beside me, though, I ain’t so sure about them. It’s a small family—mom, dad, two kids—but they are so fucking loud I want to hit something. As soon as I sat down, the parents forced their kids to move into the window seats, like they were afraid I was going to do something to them. That pissed me off, but I kept my damned mouth shut because I don’t want to deal with no fucking bullshit on a plane in close quarters. Plus, I don’t want those kids to have to listen to their parents be judgmental fuckers like my own are. If I can spare them that, I’ll deal with the fucking judgmental and wary looks the kids’ parents keep shooting my way.

The noise level is pretty fucking bothersome, though. The kids-one girl, one boy-can’t be more than four or five, and they really don’t want to be on the plane. The girl hasn’t stopped crying since take-off started and the boy is holding his mother’s hand with such a strong grip I’m surprised she hasn’t tried to shake him off. It must be their first plane trip, too. I kinda want to ask, but I know better than to say shit to them.

Parents of kids like that always think I’m a violent freak and they’re always afraid of me. I like kids, okay, though. I mean, they’re kids. And when they are young like these kids are, they haven’t seen enough of the world to get jaded. Which means they don’t fucking judge me, like the rest of the goddamned world does. So yeah, I like kids. They take me at face value and don’t try to stick me with a fucking label.

The parents finally get the girl to stop crying. They do it by distracting her with a toy they obviously prepared ahead of time and she latches onto the doll with all her strength and then she starts talking to it like the doll is the best friend she’s ever had in her life. It makes me smile to see that, cuz kids are fucking cute as hell, but it makes me a little sad, because part of the reason my parents hate me so goddamned much is that I’m not a girl.

When they had Ry, they wanted a son, so he’s fucking perfect in their eyes. But me? My parents didn’t want another son. They wanted a girl they could dote on and spoil rotten. Life didn’t go along with what they wanted, though, and they got me instead. Hell-I’ve been a disappointment to my mother since the day I was fucking born, and for a reason I obviously had no fucking control over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Nine

 

          I end up coming violently awake as the plane starts to land. Fuck. Just my luck to come out of a good fucking nap just in time to deal with this bullshit again. I lurch forward in my seat and grab onto my knees, holding my head between them. That fucking motion sickness pill has worn off and I am desperately trying not to be violently sick all over the people sitting beside me. Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to coat the kids’ parental fuckers with lots of vomit, because they are judgmental assholes, but I don’t want to make the kiddies start crying. They didn’t do anything to deserve having to deal with that shit and they’re already freaking out about the plane landing.

          The little girl is sobbing her fucking eyes out and I feel fucking helpless. I want to smile at her or something to comfort her, but I need some fucking comforting of my own. The plane rolls forward and back and I want OFF this goddamn thing. Fucking hell. Why don’t these stupid fucking machines come with warnings? If this is the price I have to pay for flying, I don’t know that I ever want to get back on another plane in my life. Fuck.

          I squeeze my eyes shut and concentrate on breathing. If I can keep control of my lungs, I can keep control of my fucking stomach. I ain’t got shit in my stomach to throw up, so I really don’t want to fucking puke. Yeah, I’ve gone all day without fucking eating because my mom was in a fucking hurry and she didn’t give me any goddamn money to buy lunch with. And I don’t want to puke with nothing in my fucking stomach. I’ve dry-heaved before and it is one of the worst fucking feelings in the world.

          The last fucking time it happened, I was fighting. Go fucking figure. And it was one of those fights I didn’t actually win. The guy landed a really good punch right in my goddamn stomach and I doubled over right in front of him and retched. It was fucking pathetic, but I’ve always known the risks of confronting people obviously fucking stronger than me.

          But at least there’s a fucking chance to get one-up on someone who beats me the first time. This plane, though. Fuck. I can’t do shit about the rocking of this fucking plane and it fucking sucks. I hate not being able to control my own goddamn body. And how the fuck did Ry know I would be motion sick anyway? Why the fuck don’t I remember ever being on a plan before today?

          It feels like a fucking eternity before the wheels hit the runway and when we are on the ground, it isn’t any fucking better because the pilot is putting on the brakes or some shit and he’s not very fucking good at doing it. Because the plane is fucking skipping forward, like someone is using it as a fucking skipping stone, only they’re using the ground instead of a river for their skipping surface and it’s really fucking difficult to sit here and keep breathing.

          What I want to fucking do is bolt to the back of the plane and puke in the men’s room, but I can’t do that shit, because we’re fucking _landing_ and that means no one can get out of their goddamn seats. And with my fucking luck, if I try to stand up right now, I won’t be able to make it two or three feet before I puke all over the goddamn floor. I refuse to be that guy that puked on the plane that the fucking stewardess staff talks about when I leave. Uh-huh. I’m going to keep my humiliation to my fucking self for as long as fucking possible.

          My control’s not going to hold much fucking longer though. Damn, how long is this fucking runway anyway? More importantly, why the fuck didn’t the airline hire a pilot who could actually fucking land a plane without skipping it like this? I’m sure pilots love to be in the fucking air, but you’d think they’d be trained to take the non-pilots they fly around into fucking consideration. What the fuck ever.

          With one last violent jolt—it’s so strong I hear the fucking brakes _screech_ —the plane comes to a halt. I abandon my fucking dignity, get my seatbelt off in two seconds flat, and bolt to the fucking bathroom and retch over the toilet. Fucking hell. I knew this was going to hurt, but it’s been so long since I dry-heaved last that I forgot just _how_ fucking much it was going to hurt. But fuck. At least no one is watching me puke.

          Sure, the people on the plane saw me bolt to the bathroom and I’m sure they fucking _know_ I’m puking, but at least I’m not fucking puking on them or the floor. At least I managed to hold on to that much fucking pride. My body finally stops heaving and I go back to my seat, my body trembling from the sudden weakness that vomiting always fucking causes. I’m apparently the only one who made it to the fucking bathroom.

          There is puke all over the fucking place. I guess I’m not the only person who gets motion sick on a plane. What’s kinda amusing but probably embarrassing for her is that one of the fucking stewardesses puked in the floor herself. Man, the pilot really must be terrible if he’s making the staff sick. That takes a special skill all of its own.

          On my way back to my seat, I have to sidestep several little puddles of puke. I try not to look at the puddles, knowing if I stare too long it will make me fucking sick again. Fuck. Maybe I should’ve let one of these assholes go to the bathroom instead of me; all I did was fucking dry-heave. There was no fucking mess to clean up.

          But I’m not that fucking nice. I’d rather save myself the embarrassment than let a complete stranger save face over me. Fuck that. Now, if it’d been Jess or Howie who had gotten sick like that, I would’ve fucking pushed them ahead of me, dignity be damned. My friends are my fucking world and I will do anything for either of them.

          That last thought pulls me up short. Howie’s going to be at Aifam Academy. I’m going to be able to talk to him all fucking year about whatever I want. But that thing he said to me in the park the day I got my scholarship award still fucking worries me. “Don’t expect anything from me.”

          What the fuck does that mean? We’re friends, but I don’t understand Howie at all most of the time. But I don’t think that’s unusual. I mean, I certainly don’t understand Jess most of the time. Girls are fucking weird. Jess is cool and all, and she’s definitely a friend, but that doesn’t mean I know fucking everything about her.

          Like, I know she hangs out with these two chicks that she thinks are cool, but I don’t know fuck-all about them. For all I know, they could be fucking prostitutes or addicts she’s got strung-out on her shit. I don’t dig into her business and she stays the fuck out of mine. That’s how I am with Howie, too. So I don’t really get why he told me not to expect shit from me, because I’ve never expected any fucking thing from him before.

          The only thing that makes any fucking sense is if he was trying to tell me that I shouldn’t expect him to be my friend anymore. And that just seems fucking weird to me. Why would he want to suddenly disassociate himself with me after three fucking years of being friends?

          Fuck. It dawns on me. Aifam Academy is for fucking rich people. Howie is fucking loaded. Goddamn it. He probably doesn’t want the stigma of hanging out with a poor asshole like me. My breath hitches a little, because fuck, the thought of that really fucking hurts. I never thought Howie was that fucking shallow. And hell, I remind myself, there’s no fucking proof that he is that shallow. I’m just jumping to conclusions. No fucking surprise there.

          I manage to get off the plane and get my luggage sorted out with minimal hassle, which is fucking nice after the crappy ass plane ride. I consider saying something to someone about the fucking horrible pilot who made even his staff sick with his bad flying, but it ain’t that goddamn important. I’m sure someone fucking else will say something about it, because I saw at least ten other people besides me that got fucking sick. I doubt that’s normal, but what the fuck do I know about planes?

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Ten

 

I spot a man wearing a white poster board around his neckwith the words Aifam Academy scrawled in sloppy print on the front. At least it’s big and readable, even if it is kinda hard to make it out at first glance. The guy the poster board’s attached to is shorter than me. No surprise there; practically everyone is shorter than me since I’m 6’0” now. The fucking growth spurt I had between 6th grade and 8th grade was a little fucking ridiculous.

Being tall is definitely an advantage though. It means adults don’t realize I’m a teenager so they don’t try to treat me like a kid. They just treat me like I look like a mean motherfucker they should stay the fuck away from. Which works perfectly fine for me, considering I want them all to stay the fuck away from me in the first goddamned place.

I sling my carry-on bag over my shoulder and walk over to the guy. “You my ride?” I ask.

He pays attention to me for the first time, which, in retrospect, is a little fucking weird. I mean, I stand out a little in my full black garb and I don’t look like a very nice person. Most people would spot me instantly and be wary of what I might fucking do to them. But this guy? He doesn’t even seem to notice me until I fucking say something to him.

“What’s your name?” he asks and there’s no emotion in his voice. No scorn, no judgment, no nothing.

It surprises me so much that I end up being respectful to him without even fucking meaning to. “Jake Collins,” I say. “The letter I got said I was supposed to meet someone here who would take me to the school.”

He nods and pulls a mini notebook out of his jeans. The guy’s dressed pretty fucking casually for someone who works as a driver for a rich ass place like Aifam. He flips the notebook open and scans a list that I can’t see, because he’s tilting it away from me at just the right angle that I can’t read any of the names. I’d be irritated if I thought he was doing that shit on purpose, but I can tell from the way he’s concentrating on the little book that it’s just the way he holds the fucking thing.

“Okay,” he says. “You’re on the list. Is that all your luggage?” He’s starting to creep me out, because there’s no fucking inflection in his voice at all. How the hell can he talk to someone and sound like a goddamned monotone robot? I almost ask the question before I realize he’s waiting on me to answer the question he just fucking asked me.

I don’t really want to be rude to someone I just met, especially since I really can’t read the guy at all, and I don’t know if he’s someone I can take in a fight or not. Plus, I ain’t really looking to get in a fight with any of the Aifam staff—this is my chance for a new fucking start and I’m planning on starting out right.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s everything.”

“Okay,” he says. “There are three more students on my list. Their planes land in the next twenty minutes.” He reaches into his back pocket and grabs his wallet and peels a twenty out of here. “Here. Go get something to eat while we wait.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “Are you supposed to be giving me money?”

“All your meals are provided for by Aifam. The money in my wallet doesn’t belong to me.” His face is stone; emotionally vacant.

I shiver. I’m a bit creeped out by this guy, no fucking lie. I’ve never met anyone with such a vacant expression in my life. Even his eyes seem fucking soulless—they’re dark brown verging on black. I grab the twenty and flee to the closest restaurant. Anything’s better than being stared at by this creep.

That restaurant is Wendy’s, which is fucking fine by me. But at this point, I’d be fucking fine with anything. I haven’t eaten since last night and I am fucking starving. I’m lucky I haven’t passed out or some shit yet. I grab a triple cheeseburger combo with fries and a coke and beeline to the back of the fucking restaurant, where I can get away from most of the noise.

I wolf the food down pretty fucking fast—too fast, really, as I can feel it trying to crawl back out of my throat. Settle down, cow, you’re already fucking dead. I don’t need to see you again. Fuck. I’m getting a refill of coke when the creepy vacant guy is suddenly beside me, three other teenagers trailing in his wake.

The other teenagers behind him don’t look like normal teens either. Like me, they all have a pretty fucking dangerous air. I feel a bit shaken; I ain’t fucking used to seeing kids my age who I can’t size up in a second.

The creepy guy decides to introduce us. “Jake,” he says, “this is Alan, Marvin, and Talon.” He points to each person in turn, like I need a fucking signpost or some shit.

Alan is skinny. He’s 5’5”, so he’s shorter than me, which doesn’t come as a surprise. His hair is slicked back into a low Mohawk that is dyed blue on one side and green on the other. There’s a ring hanging from his nose and a barbell in his bottom lip. And he’s dressed in pretty standard punk clothes—he’s got an orange Ramone’s t-shirt riding over black pants; the type people normally associate with the Goth crowd because they are very obviously Hot Topic pants—but his eyes are what catches me off guard.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I ain’t about to wax poetic over another guy’s fucking eyes of all goddamn things, but there’s something fucking off about his eyes. It takes me a second to realize what it is, but when I spot it, I feel seven kinds of stupid. One of his eyes is blue while the other is green. His eyes aren’t the same fucking color as each other. I bet he gets ribbed for that shit all the fucking time.

“Hi,” he says, and blows a bubble of gum out of his mouth, popping it when he gets it as big as it’ll go without popping on its own.

“Hi.” I don’t know how to talk to other kids my own fucking age, especially people that look like these guys. I don’t hang out with normal people and these guys aren’t normal, but I’ve never met anyone like them before either.

Marvin is dressed in pretty standard clothes. But he’s putting out some fucking weird ass vibes. He’s got blue jeans and a white tee on and he’s around 5’6” and it takes me a second to figure out why the fuck he seems so damned weird to me. Then I realize it’s because he has long curly hair that falls all the way down to the middle of his fucking back and he doesn’t have it put up in a ponytail or nothing. But he’s obviously comfortable with how he looks, despite the fact it seems like he could pass for a chick if he really wanted to, and his stance reflects that.

And that’s when it hits me-the weird shit about these guys isn’t that they are teenagers like me. It’s that they are fucking confident teenagers. They have a strong sense of self-identity and everything about that fucking screams that.

Even Talon, who is, incidentally, a _chick,_ seems at home in her own goddamn skin. She’s got on a tight black mini-skirt with fishnet stockings and a pink tube top that shows off her fucking flat her stomach is. Damn, but the girl is a fucking beanpole. I ain’t never seen a chick so fucking tiny in my life. She can’t be more than 4’8” and I doubt she weighs over 80 pounds.

All of these guys have fucking presence and it makes me feel a bit fucking anxious until I realize that I have the same fucking type of presence that they do. But I still don’t have a fucking clue what to say in order to break the ice between us. I ain’t that kinda guy.

Luckily for all of us, Talon does that shit for us. That’s one thing girls can do that I’ll never be able to understand. What is it about chicks that let them open a conversation about fucking anything that allows them to get a conversation rolling?

“Are you all scholarship students too?” she asks. Her voice is like music—it’s soft and delicate and it makes me think that she’s as fragile as she looks. But I ain’t about to assume that; like I said, she’s got fucking presence.

“I am,” I say.

“Me too,” Alan and Marvin say, speaking at virtually the same fucking time.

The creepy guy—who, incidentally, still hasn’t introduced _himself—_ leads us outside to the parking area and motions us inside a pretty standard SUV. I guess Aifam doesn’t pull out the limo for their scholarship students.

“What’d you guys write for your essay?” Talon asks, continuing the conversation.

Marvin answers before anyone else gets a chance to. “I wrote that I was tired of being hassled for looking like a girl just because I liked to wear my hair long and that I needed to get away from the assholes at my school.”

Talon nods, like the answer doesn’t surprise her.

Alan pops another bubble before he adds his own response to the mix. “My mom’s a coke addict and a prostitute. I just said I wanted to get away from that.” He shrugs it off, like it’s no fucking big deal that his mother is addicted to coke or that she fucks people for money.

Hell, maybe for him it isn’t a big fucking deal. In any case, it’s his own fucking business. “I said I wanted to get the fuck out the shithole I lived in,” I say, and I’m pleasantly surprised when the others don’t shy away from me as soon as I say it. Like I said, I’m a little bit anxious about talking to kids my own age who aren’t Howie or Jess.

Talon smiles softly at us. “I told them that I couldn’t achieve my dream by living in a place where everyone treated me like I was glass. I look fragile, but I’m not.” There’s a bit of an edge to her voice, like she’s daring us to contradict her.

None of us make that mistake. We’ve all fucking been there. I can tell that just by hearing what the others wrote on their essays. None of us have had easy fucking lives—that much is pretty fucking obvious.

“What’s your dream, Talon?” Marvin asks.

“Don’t laugh,” she warns—and it _is_ a warning; there’s no mistaking that tone. “I want to be a mechanic,” she says, when she’s sure that none of us are going to start laughing at her.

“That’s fucking awesome,” I tell her. “I don’t know shit about cars.”

That thaws her and she relaxes. I guess it’s different for chicks. Harder, maybe, because they get shoved into these roles that society insists they play. But seriously, the world needs to grow the fuck up. It ain’t the goddamn 1950s anymore.

 “I haven’t had a chance to work on any yet,” she says. “My parents think it’s unseemly for a lady to get grease on her hands.”

“Wish my mom felt more like that about my brother,” I say. “He came into the house caked in grease after working on the car with our dad. And I mean he was fucking covered. He had it in his hair, on his clothes, and on his fucking shoes. He tracked it all over the fucking floor our mom had waxed the weekend before and she didn’t say a goddamn word to him.”

Talon wrinkles her nose. “That’s disgusting,” she says. “Does your Mom always let you and your brother get away with that kind of thing?”

I scowl at her before I realize she’s got no fucking way to know the issues I got with my parents. “My brother could get away with fucking murder and our mother wouldn’t bat a fucking eye. It ain’t the same for me.”

Talon’s eyes widen, but I don’t see pity there, which is a fucking relief. I don’t need anyone’s fucking pity. “So that’s why you applied for the scholarship?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I got sick of dealing with my fucking family.”

“Same here,” Marvin says. He gives us a lopsided grin before he elaborates. “My dad’s the only family I have, but he doesn’t get the hair.” He runs a finger through it, twirling it without conscious thought. It makes him look a bit girly, but whatever—it’s his goddamned hair. If he wants to fucking twirl it, then I don’t see any fucking reason to complain about it.

“I like your hair,” Talon says. Her tone is slightly wistful. “I can’t wear mine that long; it gets in my way.” Her hair is brown, streaked through with blonde highlights, and it just barely reaches her shoulders.

“Thanks,” Marvin says.

“Don’t you guys think it’s a little weird that the four of us were chosen for these scholarships?” Alan asks, popping a bubble. The question is so different from the casual way he asks it that it takes me a minute to register what the fuck he actually said.

“You mean because we’re all a little rough around the edges?” Marvin asks, still wearing that slightly quirky grin.

“Yep,” Alan says.

“I don’t know,” Talon says. “I had some concerns about the contract they sent, but I would’ve done just about anything to get away from where I was at.”

That comment sinks in because it’s becoming pretty fucking clear that all of us would have done ‘just about anything’ to get the fuck away from where we came from.

“Why the fuck does the school want people who want to get the fuck away from their families and shit?” I ask.

Marvin shrugs.

Alan pops a bubble. Stupid fucking gum. I want to poke it with my finger just one time and watch the gum smack him in the face, but I manage to keep myself in check.

Talon shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “It’s a good question,” she says, but the words come out grudgingly slow. “Why does Aifam Academy give scholarship awards to people who want to get away from home?”

“Fuck that,” I say. “Those essays we had to do—did you guys write a full fucking essay or just a couple fucking sentences?”

Marvin loses his grin for the first time. “Two sentences,” he says, then makes a face. “I hate writing essays.”

Talon swallows. “One sentence,” she says.

Alan stops popping bubbles. “Shit,” he says. “I only wrote one.”

“So we all only wrote one fucking sentence and got into the most prestigious fucking school in the country?” Fuck. Something is wrong, but I don’t know what it is. I’m not good with this kind of shit. Conspiracy theories and shit is more Jess’s style than mine. Damn, but I could use her right now.

“Well,” Marvin says, and he sounds a whole lot fucking calmer than I feel. “Do any of you want to go back home?”

“Fuck no!” I say, adding my voice to the din as everyone says it at the same goddamn time. “I’ll take my chances with this weird ass school.”

Talon nods, but her eyes are troubled. She tries to smile, but it looks like more of a grimace. “I don’t want to go back to a place that won’t let me be myself,” she says. “Nothing can be worse than that.”

Alan nods and starts popping fucking bubbles again. “I’d rather die than go back to watching my mom throw herself at men to make a quick buck.” He says it like it’s nothing, but his eyes give him away. It fucking kills him to watch his mom do that shit.

I don’t fucking blame him. At least I didn’t have to deal with that- I wouldn’t wish that shit on anyone. “Marv?” I ask. “What about you?”

He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I wouldn’t have signed their contract if I wasn’t desperate to get away from home. As weird as it was, I signed it, so I might as well give the school a chance. We’re probably just overthinking this, anyway.”

He has a good fucking point. It’s been a pretty stressful fucking day and it’s no wonder all of us are feeling a bit paranoid. We’re in a strange fucking place surrounded by strangers and I’m pretty sure none of us have ever decided to leave home for four fucking years straight before.

“You’re fucking right,” I say. “It’s got to be fucking stress.”

Talon sighs in relief and Alan gives a slow nod of agreement. The school we agreed to go to may be weirder than we expect it to be, but what the fuck does that matter? I don’t know about the others, but pretty much anything is better than trying to deal with my fucking family. Good fucking riddance.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eleven

 

          “We’re here,” the creepy guy says from the front seat. He’s been able to hear our conversation the whole fucking time, but he hasn’t said shit to any of us about it. Either he’s paid to keep his fucking mouth shut or he just doesn’t give a shit.

I follow the others out of the SUV and blink against the harsh light. It was fucking night when my plane landed, so the sudden glare of a well-lit schoolyard is fucking hard on my eyes.

          “Follow me,” creepy guy says. I roll my eyes at him and hang back to let the others get ahead of me. I want to get a better fucking look at this goddamn school that I threw my horrible fucking family away for. I have to admit, it is pretty fucking impressive considering I can make out fucking everything despite it being 10 fucking PM.

My first impression of it is that it is really fucking huge. I can’t even see where the building ends from where I’m standing, and I’m standing right in front of the fucking doors. I glance back the way we came and see that we came through an iron-wrought gate. I wasn’t paying any fucking attention the scenery during the drive, though- I was having my first fucking genuine conversation with kids my own age who didn’t turn their noses up at me just because I looked a bit mean.

          The gate’s pretty far away and I can only make it out because there are two lights shining at either side of it. It’s pretty fucking massive itself. It’s easily thirty feet high and at least twice that fucking wide. I don’t know why the school thinks they need a gate that fucking huge for this school, but I don’t know fucking shit about being rich either.

          I chalk that shit up to the idiosyncrasies of the rich and turn around to look at the front of the goddamn building. It rises into the sky like a fucking mansion. It’s fucking ten stories high. What the fuck kind of school needs ten goddamn floors? I shake my head in disgusted awe. Fucking rich people; spending their money whatever goddamn way they please.

          Talon, Alan, and Marvin are just as awestruck at the sight of the school as I am. None of us speak as we are shown through the front doors. I am almost afraid to fucking walk on this floor—it seems like it was cut from the fanciest fucking marble they could find. I finally find the fucking courage to take a step into the hallway and I’m fucking shocked that my heavy boots don’t make a fucking sound.

          I lean over to the others. “This floor is fucking spooky,” I whisper. At the curious looks they give me, I stomp my foot down as hard as I can. Whatever the fuck this floor is made of, it’s fucking impressive. Because I can stomp down pretty fucking hard, but there is still no goddamn sound.

          The three of them snicker at me, probably thinking I didn’t do it as hard as I could or something. I scowl at them. “You fucking try it so you can see what the fuck I’m talking about.”

          They look skeptical, but finally Alan decides to humor me. He stomps his foot down hard—I can tell it’s fucking hard, because I can see the tremors it sends up his fucking leg—and there’s no goddamn sound.

          The others seem like they are more close to convinced than not and they both stomp their feet down as hard as they can, too. No fucking sound.

          “What the fuck is this floor made of?” I mutter, and I’m about to get down on my goddamn hands and knees to examine the tile when the creepy guy comes back. Fuck. I hadn’t even realized the guy had left.

          “If you’re done playing with the floor,” the guy says, with the same creepy ass monotone voice, “I will show you to your rooms for the night.”

          “For the night?” Marvin asks.

          “You will be spending your first night here in our guest quarters,” the creepy guy says. “All scholarship students will have their permanent quarters assigned to them tomorrow after orientation. Do any of you have any concerns about rooming with each other for the night?”

          I glance sideways at Talon, who is the only one of us I can think of that might have a problem with being forced to room with three fucking guys. “I don’t,” I say.

          “Nope,” Talon says. Alan and Marvin’s “No’s” mix with her answer.

          “Then please follow me,” the creepy guy says. Is this guy the fucking butler or something? I am sick and tired of not knowing his name.

          “Who are you?” I ask, making sure the creepy guy knows it’s him I’m talking to. “You have yet to tell us your name.”

          He stares at me, same vacant look in his eyes. “My name is Simon George,” he says. “I’m the Groundskeeper for the Academy.”

          I shiver. Something about the way he says Groundskeeper rubs me the wrong fucking way, but I ain’t got no fucking clue as to why. I mean, it makes sense that a place this fucking big needs a Groundskeeper, but is he really able to take care of the place all by himself?

Granted, it’s not like I know if the guy is the only fucking person that works on the grounds. For all I fucking know, there could be a crew of 50 fucking people that do all that shit. The place is definitely big enough to fucking need it.

          But I don’t ask Simon anymore questions. I get the feeling he doesn’t like answering them and he doesn’t seem like a very nice person. As long as he keeps looking through me, I’ll be fine. But a person like that, man, I don’t ever want to see his fucking eyes focused on me or a real expression on his face. I’m pretty sure when a person has an expressionless face like that it means that they’re hiding some pretty fucking sinister shit underneath the surface. And I ain’t got no fucking interest in digging that shit out into the light.

          The other three seem to have the same sort of thought, because none of us say fucking anything until we get to the room that’s been set aside for us. I have to force myself to keep looking at the floor as I’m walking, instead of staring straight up at the fucking ceiling, because the fucking ceiling is so fucking high above us that I’m starting to think the school might only have one fucking floor.

          I somehow manage not to trip over my own fucking feet and the four of us are shown politely into our quarters for the night. Once the door is closed and we’re by ourselves, I let myself turn around and actually take in the fucking room.

          And I gape. I can’t fucking help it. The room is fucking ridiculously large. One thing can definitely said about rich motherfuckers—they don’t do anything small. The room itself is laid out in a pretty simple way, but it’s still really fucking elegant.

          There are four identical canopied beds laid out evenly across the back of the room. Each of them are dressed with red comforters and I can see from where the sheets are turned down that the sheets are red too. I’m fucking glad to see that shit. Red is my favorite goddamned color.

          The space in-between each bed is fucking ridiculous. There’s at least thirty feet between each one. Thirty fucking feet. Seriously, this room is too goddamned big. It’s like whoever designed it just knocked down a few walls between a few pre-existing rooms to connect all of them to make this one. Fuck, for all I know, that’s exactly what they did.

          There’s a sleek black nightstand beside each bed, on the left-hand side. At the foot of each bed there’s a small chest. Seeing as there’s no fucking place else to put clothes and shit, I guess those chests must be what serves as storage space. I mean, these are fucking guest quarters, according to creepy Simon. It’s a pretty damn safe bet that guests don’t usually carry their entire wardrobe with them whenever they visit, so the chest is probably more than enough fucking space.

          I don’t know of any other school that has guest quarters, but I ain’t never been in a fucking boarding school before. And I especially ain’t been in one that works like this one, where you are completely cut off from your old life for four fucking years straight. Add to that the fact that these people are fucking extravagantly rich and I got to admit, I got no fucking clue what to expect.

          I toss my bag on top of the chest of the bed in the left corner of the room. No one objects to this, which makes my fucking night, because I was dead sure I was going to have to fight for it. But Talon takes the far right bed, Alan the one next to her, and Marvin the one next to me. And no one says a fucking word about the bed they get. It’s like some kind of fucking magic or some shit like that, the way we all manage to choose a bed without fucking arguing.

          Or maybe it’s just that they’re all just as fucking exhausted as me. I throw myself on top of the bed I’ve chosen and close my eyes. It’s been a goddamned long fucking day and despite having slept on the plane, I am fucking drained. I decide to wait a few minutes before going and brushing my teeth and doing all that fucking shit, but it never happens. A few seconds after I close my eyes, I’m fucking lost to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twelve

 

          I wake up naturally as the sun slowly starts to creep into the room as it rises. It’s a lot fucking better than waking up to a goddamned alarm clock, that’s for fucking sure. I’ve broken so many of those goddamned things that I stopped trying to use them a long fucking time ago. Instead, I’d use my phone and put it in my bottom dresser drawer at home, so that when the alarm went off I didn’t try to fucking break it.

          But if I get to wake up like this every day, to the fucking sunlight streaming in through the window, then my life is fucking complete. Because there is nothing that beats waking up naturally. Fucking nothing. Well, on second thought, fighting runs a pretty close goddamned second, but waking up feeling rested to the gentle light of the sun in the morning as it rises is fucking amazing.

          Granted, I love the fucking morning, and that fact has annoyed my fucking family for years. As soon as I wake up, that’s it. I don’t have to go through any weird ass routines to get ‘fully’ awake. I just am. If that ever changes, I might fucking die, because I love that I don’t have to deal with the fucking grogginess that non-morning people always fucking go through.

          I glance over at the other beds to see if anyone else is awake. I can’t actually see past the bed Marvin’s taken beside me, of course, because the room’s too damn big, so I slide out of my own bed and grab my travel kit out of my bag. I’m fucking annoyed that I didn’t manage to stay awake long enough to brush my goddamned teeth, but I can make up for that shit this morning.

          I slip into the bathroom and stare in shock at the fucking enormous bath in front of me. It’s more like a goddamned swimming pool than a bath and there are four fucking shower stalls with opaque doors that go all the way to the fucking ceiling. I still can’t touch the ceiling in this room or the guest room, but at least it’s not as high up as the fucking ceiling in the hallway we walked through to get here.

          Fuck. If there are showers this fucking luxurious, I sure as hell ain’t missing a chance to take a shower before we go to the fucking orientation shit later. I leave the bathroom and go back to my bag, slipping out the clothes I need to change into, and then I go back.

          It’s pretty fucking obvious that no one else is awake yet, so I’m definitely going to take advantage of that fact to take a long ass shower. It takes me a couple minutes to figure out how to work the fucking thing, because there are way too fucking many handles, but I eventually figure it out. It’s a good thing the fucking handles are labeled.

          Apparently this shower comes with its own fucking shampoo, conditioner, and soap dispensers, in about four different scents. Luckily, one of them is “neutral,” because I don’t want to fucking walk around smelling like a goddamn girl.

          I get the water to the fucking perfect temperature and just stand under it for a few minutes. I fucking love the way water feels in a shower. If I get to take showers like this for the next four years, I’ll fucking deal with anything that comes my way.

          The euphoria of the water cascade wears off after a few minutes and I get down to fucking business and get myself clean. I usually jerk off during my showers, but I feel too fucking self-conscious about doing that shit in a shower that is this fucking pristine. I’m sure that shit will wear off in no time, but for now, I manage to abstain.

          When I get done with my shower and go back out to the room, the others are up. “Shower’s free,” I say.

          Talon nods her thanks and disappears into the bathroom. When she gets done, Alan and Marvin go take their showers at the same time. Considering there are four fucking shower stalls, we could all have showered at the same time if it wouldn’t have been too fucking weird to do that with a girl in the mix.

          According to my phone, it’s 10am when creepy Simon knocks on the door. Marvin’s the one who answers it.

          “Orientation starts in an hour,” says creepy Simon. “I will come to collect you ten minutes prior to its start.”

          “Thanks,” Marvin says quietly, and I can tell by the tense set of his shoulders that Simon creeps him out, too.

          I’m fucking relieved by that, because I was starting to think that maybe I was fucking crazy for being weirded out by the Groundskeeper.

          Alan sits down beside me on the bed I used last night. “That guy,” he says, “is a little odd.”

          I’m starting to realize that Alan has the greatest gift for understatement I’ve ever fucking seen in my life. “Yeah,” I say. “He’s fucking creepy.”

          There’s not a whole lot to do stuck in a room together for an hour, but somehow we manage to talk to each other until creepy Simon comes back to collect us to take us to Orientation. I don’t really learn much, since we just talk about random bullshit, but I get the feeling that the four of us will be able to become friends. It’s fucking nice to know that I’m not the only scholarship student in this goddamn school, because I was fucking worried that I’d get here and be stuck talking to my goddamned self for the next four years.

          Creepy Simon leads us to a gym. Of course it’s a fucking gym. Why am I not fucking surprised? Why does every school insist on holding all of their stupid ass speeches and events in their fucking gyms? Aren’t there other rooms that would work just as well? Or better? Fuck. I’m fucking sick of having to attend speeches given in goddamned school gyms.

          And then the person on the podium begins to speak and I about lose my fucking mind. Because what she is saying is not fucking possible. There is no fucking way in this world that the shit that is coming out of her goddamned mouth has any basis in reality. Because if it is, then I’m royally fucking screwed. And so are my new friends. Goddamn. I just got away from one crazy ass fucking place, but maybe I should’ve fucking stayed there, now that I know what this fucking school is all about. Well fuck. What the fuck am I supposed to do now?

          Okay, so I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but it’s easier to talk about this shit after it’s happened. And I need some fucking time to wrap my head around all that shit. Because I mean, it’s a whole fucking lot to deal with. I’m still not sure I really understand everything that just fucking happened at that so-called Orientation.

          But fuck. It’s important enough that I’ll retrace it. Because it was really fucking weird and I still think I may have walked into someone’s idea of a really fucking sick practical joke.

          At the orientation, I sit with the others and wait for the person on the stage to start fucking speaking. The person standing up there is a woman, which isn’t all that unusual, because nowadays there are a lot of fucking women principals. Like I keep saying, it ain’t the goddamn 1950s anymore.

          She waits until everyone is mostly settled down and then she picks up the microphone in front of her and starts talking. “Welcome to Aifam Academy,” she says. “Before you get too comfortable, it is my responsibility to tell you the truth about this school.”

          I sit up so fucking straight after hearing those words come out of her mouth that I am pretty fucking sure I’ve pulled something.

          “You see,” she says. “Aifam Academy is not a school in the traditional sense.” Pausing for effect, she adds, “But we are a school. The students we teach here are killers.”

          What the fuck is she talking about? How the hell can this school be responsible for teaching killers? It’s a goddamned high school, for fuck’s sake. Talon is sitting beside me and I see her tense hard at the woman’s words.

          But the woman isn’t done talking. Not by a long fucking shot.

          “My name,” she says, “is Mariah Young. I am the Dean of Aifam Academy and while I am sure there are a few of you who are shocked by what I have just said, I assure you, I am being completely serious.”

          “You see, assassins require schools the same way normal children do. Only they don’t need to learn the same skillset as normal kids. So this school doesn’t operate with a traditional classroom setting. I’ll talk to you about that more a little bit later on.”

          “The children of assassins learn how to kill when they are old enough to hold a knife without stabbing themselves by accident. Most assassins make their first kill when they are five years old.”

          “Aifam Academy separates the assassins from the rest of the students that attend the school, because the assassins are the privileged elite that are nurtured here. In fact, we have a very special scholarship program that is unique to the curriculum for our assassin students.”

          “There are two separate wings in Aifam. There’s the high school wing and there’s the elementary school wing. Since you are all high school students, you’ll never set foot in the elementary school section. If you do, the elementary school assassins will kill you without hesitation. Because that’s what they are taught to do. They will not show you mercy, so your best bet is just to stay away from them.”

          “Now, the way the assassin curriculum works is a little complicated, but I’ll try to explain it so you can get a better understanding of how things work here. While the assassins are in elementary school, they are taught to kill without mercy. Then, their final year of elementary school, they are given an assignment.”

          “That assignment is for them to go out into the world to a middle school of their choosing, so that they can vet the students. What this means is that they spend three years at middle school and decide on a student that they feel has a lot of untapped potential.”

          “They are told to make friends with these people and to get them to apply for our scholarship. As long as the assassin students send us a letter with the name of their chosen target, those scholarship applicants will receive the scholarship no matter what they write on their essay. And no one who submits an application will receive a scholarship unless they have been vetted and approved of by an assassin student.”

          “The reason for the four year boarding school contract is because this school, as soon as you hear this speech, becomes your prison for the next four years. If you try to escape it, you will be killed without mercy. Every single student here who is not on a scholarship is an assassin. You are free to doubt me, but if you do, then you are doing so at the risk of your own life.”

          “See, we teach assassins to kill mercilessly when they are very young. But we started to see incredibly disturbing patterns emerging after the assassins hit high school and college age. Because we weren’t teaching our assassin students how to handle normal humans on a regular basis, they were becoming too aggressive. Too prone to kill without provocation. And it got too hard to keep all of their kills covered up, because they were killing too many people in too short a time.”

          “So we developed this scholarship program with thoughts to our assassins’ well-being in mind. For three years, these assassins have had to interact with people their own age without killing anyone. For the next four years, they will have to room with a scholarship student—the one they vetted—without killing. Because they need to be able to handle the stress and duress it causes when someone finds out their secret.”

          “But just because they aren’t supposed to kill you for four years doesn’t meant that they will be able to refrain from doing so. These students are trained killers; every single one of them can drop a person with one finger. Like I said, they are experts. You’d be stupid not to take that seriously.”

          “Oh, and before I forget. Before our assassins can graduate from their senior year here at Aifam Academy, they have to kill the scholarship student they vetted. If they kill you before the final month of their senior school year, they fail and will be expelled from the ranks of assassins.”

          “Now, I’m sure hearing all of this has all of you very scared and angry, but I’m here to tell you that you do have a way out of this. If you can make yourself valuable enough to the assassin who vetted you over the course of four years, then they are allowed to spare your lives and still pass the test.”

          Mariah smirks cruelly. “In all the years I have been the Dean of this school, and I have been the Dean here for fifteen years, I have never seen a single person make themselves valuable enough to an assassin student for them to consider the person worth more alive than dead.”

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twelve

 

          I am fucking blown away by the speech I just fucking heard. I can tell the others are similarly affected because they are talking urgently to each other in low voices. I can make out the words, but I don’t give a shit what they are saying, because I’m stuck on the shit the woman just said in her speech.

          Every fucking student who isn’t on a scholarship is a goddamn assassin. That means Howie is a fucking assassin. I don’t want to fucking believe that shit, because he’s fucking _Howie._ I’ve known the guy for three fucking years and I feel like I should know better than anyone if he has the potential to fucking kill people without mercy.

          But I don’t fucking know the answer to that question. I know how I saw him act around other people; like nothing fucking touched him and like he was willing to be involved in fucking everything, but I never tried to fucking understand the reasons he had for doing the shit he did.

          Howie told me a long fucking time ago not to expect anything from him and now I fucking get it. He told me that shit because he was fucking vetting me to see if I was worth being his goddamned target. I was never his fucking friend, no matter how he might have acted around me. No fucking wonder the guy told me not to fucking expect shit from him. But that doesn’t make me feel like any less of a fucking idiot.

          Not to mention it’s really fucking hard to wrap my mind around the fact that Howie, of all fucking people, is a goddamn assassin. He’s always seemed so fucking fragile to me. But Talon looks fragile to me too and she’s pretty fucking insistent that she’d not fucking breakable. It’s pretty fucking possible that it’s the exact same case for Howie.

          But fuck. Before I heard that fucking speech, I was looking forward to finding Howie and catching up with him. Now I don’t fucking know what I’m supposed to do, because all of a sudden I am completely out of my fucking depth. My so-called friend is a fucking killer and I am his fucking target practice.

          And yeah, I’m aware that Mariah said that there’s a fucking out clause, but there’s no fucking way that I can make myself valuable enough to Howie for him to keep me alive in the space of four years if I couldn’t make myself fucking valuable enough to him in the space of three to keep him from throwing me to the goddamn sharks. Fuck. He is the goddamn shark. That’s pretty fucking messed up.

          But at least know I understand why the fuck he got so pissed at me that night I tried to defend him. I never tried to get in his goddamn business after that shit happened, but that was more to keep him from getting angry at me again than anything fucking else. Those guys I saw hassling him were probably other fucking assassin students or some shit. No fucking way would he have let random thugs just fucking push him around if he’s able to kill people with a fucking finger.

          A lot of the other scholarship students are on the verge of fucking panicking. A few of them look like they’re about ready to try to fucking run out the door, despite the fact the Dean just fucking told us that if we try to escape, we’re fucking toast.

          I look at Alan, Marvin, and Talon, who have all fallen silent and are staring stonily at the wall of the gym. “Well fuck,” I say. “What the fuck do we do now?”

          Alan, for once, isn’t popping fucking bubbles anymore. “I don’t know,” he says, and he sounds really fucking tired. “I just learned that the person I thought was my best friend wants to kill me.”

          Marvin swallows. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “I guess I should have realized that no one would have been my friend just because they liked me.”

          Talon, for her part, is choking back tears. I guess she doesn’t think it is okay to fucking cry, and I don’t tell her otherwise. How she wants to deal with this shit is her own goddamned business.

          When she speaks, she does it by gasping out a word and forcing back a tear, one word at a time. It’s fucking painful to listen to, but none of us say shit to her. “I.” Gulp. “Thought.” Gulp. “That.” Gulp. “He.” Gulp. “Was.” Gulp. “My.” Gulp. “Best.” Gulp. “Friend.”

          Seriously-that was a fucking nightmare to listen to. But I’m starting to get something that the other three don’t. See, I don’t feel betrayed the way that they do. Because Howie never ever fucking came straight out and said to me that we were fucking friends. No. The only thing he ever fucking said to me was not to expect shit from him.

          Alan is the first to catch on that I’m not as upset as them. “How can you take this so calmly?” he asks.

          My hands are clenched into pretty tight fucking fists, because I’m fucking furious that I’ve been set up for this bullshit. “I’m not fucking calm,” I say. “I’m pissed the fuck off.”

          “Because of the person who set you up?” Marvin asks. “I think all of us feel betrayed.”

          I shake my head. “Howie didn’t fucking betray me,” I say. “He told me the first fucking day I met him not to expect anything from him and I took that at face value. I’ve never expected shit from him for the three fucking years that I’ve known him.”

          “But you’re still pissed off,” Marvin points out.

          I glare at him. “Well of course I’m still fucking pissed off!” I’m shouting by this time, but I can’t fucking help it. “I’m fucking target practice for a school full of goddamned assassins. I can’t help but feel a little fucking used.”

          The gym door opens then and all the students who weren’t here for the Orientation walk in and I sit up straight at the sight of them. I can feel the fucking danger pouring off of them and I ain’t about to fucking mess with them, no matter how fucking furious I feel.

          I dig my nails into my palms until they are fucking bleeding because I will not fucking engage with these guys. These students have to be the fucking assassin students and I am not stupid enough to get killed on my very first fucking day at this goddamned school.

          Not everyone keeps their cool as well as me, though. I see a couple other scholarship students I don’t know leap at the group of assassin students like wild beasts. One person steps to the front of the group and I know instantly who the fuck I’m looking at, because I’ve known him for the last three years.

          I watch as Howie uses one fucking hand to disable the two that charged the group. I can tell he didn’t kill them because the two of them are fucking groaning on the floor from where he dropped them. He didn’t even break a fucking sweat. He looks around the room and he spots me.

          I can’t help it. My spine fucking stiffens as he starts walking over to me. Fuck. I don’t want to talk to him yet. I’m too fucking shaken from everything I just found out. But I don’t have any fucking choice in the matter, do I? Howie’s a lot more than I ever fucking thought he was and I’m not ashamed to admit that right now I am fucking terrified of him.

          He stops right in front of me. And I do mean _right_ in front of me. He’s so fucking close to me that his stomach is in front of my forehead. I could head-butt him from where I’m sitting, but I ain’t about to do that. Not just because I saw what he did to those other kids, but because despite all this bullshit, he is still fucking Howie.

          “Hello, Jake,” he says.

          My newfound scholarship buddies have lost all the color in their faces. I don’t think they ever expected to come face-to-face with the assassins this soon after that horrible revelation.

          “Hello, Howard,” I say. Something tells me that calling him Howie right now would not win me any brownie points in the struggle to save my fucking life.

          He reaches a finger towards my face and I force myself not to fucking move. Whatever he wants to do to me, I will take it like a fucking man. But all he does is tilt my head back so he can look me in the eye. He tilts his own head towards Talon, Alan, and Marvin. “They look like they are hurting,” he says.

          “They feel betrayed,” I say. “They just learned their best friends want to kill them.”

          Howie raises an eyebrow and for the first fucking time since I’ve met him, I can read his goddamned expression. He’s amused. He’s fucking amused. “I can see that,” he says. “What about you, Jake? Do you feel like I betrayed you?”

          I stare at him the way I do when someone has asked me a fucking stupid ass question and don’t respond. Three years of habit is hard to fucking break, but a nail opening a cut along my face draws a hiss of pain from me.

          “Answer me when I ask a question,” Howie says.

          He’s telling me, straight up, that he holds the power here and that I’d better do what he says or else. Fine. I’ll do that. Because he’s right—he does hold the power here. And what’s worse: he holds my fucking life in his hands. “No, Howard,” I say. “I don’t feel betrayed by you.”

          “Oh?” he asks, and I can feel his breath on my face he is so fucking close to me. “Then what do you feel?”

          “Anger,” I say. “And fear.” I’m not a fucking idiot. I know that Howie can read all my emotions; he’s known me for three goddamned years.

          He smiles. “If you don’t feel betrayed, Jake, why are you angry?”

          “I’m always angry,” I say. “But right now I’m angry because I chose to come to this school. I painted a target on my own back and now I’m in a nest full of vipers. I’m angry because you won a fight I didn’t know I was involved in.”

          He lets go of my chin. “Okay,” he says. “I believe you.” He nods at the other assassin students. “Find your vets and get settled in. A few of you are going to have to deal with hysterics, but keep your irritation in check. I don’t need to remind you what happens if you fail.”

          I’m fucking speechless. Howie’s the fucking leader of the assassins? I mean, he has to be, because the rest of them just nod at him like it is fucking normal as shit for him to give them orders. Fucking hell. The more I learn, the more fucking scared I get. And for the first time in my life, all I fucking want to do is go  _home._


	5. Chapters Thirteen through Fifteen

Chapter Thirteen

 

          Howie moves away from me and helps the other assassin students gather their charges. It almost feels like I’ve been dismissed. I guess that’s about right though; I doubt I look like more than a fucking bug to him right now. It’s a little difficult, trying to reconcile the Howie I’ve known for the past three fucking years with the Howie I’m seeing in front of me right now.

          ‘Cuz this Howie isn’t holding fucking anything back. He’s directing the assassin students with a fucking ease I didn’t know he possessed and he’s helping get the hysterics of the scholarship students managed.

          Everyone is still fucking terrified, because of the shit we’ve just heard, but Howie’s making sure that no one is freaking out to the point they bolt out the goddamned door. I don’t know how he’s doing it, either, because seeing the way he moves amongst the other students is making me want to fucking bolt out the door.

          He’s so fucking sleek when he walks that it makes me feel fucking sick. I mean, he’s always had a pretty fucking confident walk, but nothing I’ve seen before compares to the way he walks around this fucking place. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have to fucking conceal who he is here, but I can tell a huge fucking difference.

          Before, he walked like he knew who he was but he couldn’t really be bothered to give a shit about the other people around him. Yeah, he was still getting into everyone’s fucking business, but he never really seemed fucking interested. More like he did it just to have something to fucking do, but he always seemed bored.

          Now, there’s no fucking hint of that. He’s walking around the fucking place like he owns it. And there’s fucking emotions on his face. I think that’s the thing that creeps me out the fucking most, because I am not used to seeing Howie wear anything but a fake smile that never reaches his fucking eyes.

          But when he turns to the other assassin students and talks to them, I see for the first time that these are the people that he considers his fucking friends. Because he is animated and passionate and I’m starting to realize that there is no fucking way I’m ever going to make it out of this school alive, because I don’t think I’ve ever managed to make Howie happy.

          Every time we’ve hung out in the past—and fuck, right now that feels like fucking decades ago instead of like the last time was just fucking two weeks back—he always seemed so fucking far away. Like he came to the parks to hang out with me and Jess but he wasn’t really having any fucking fun.

          Granted, until today, I wouldn’t have been able to fucking tell if Howie was having fun or not, because he always had the same bored expression on his goddamned face. But now that I’ve seen it, I can say without a fucking doubt in my mind that he has only ever tolerated me and Jess. I’m fucking nothing to this guy.

          I’m starting to shake, because the shock of all this bullshit is starting to wear off and the fucking reality of it starting to sink the fuck in. I am stuck in this godforsaken fortress for the next four fucking years and I don’t have any fucking way to get out.

          I’m sure some people are trying to think of fucking clever ass ways to escape and I guess some of them will probably try to run the fuck away as soon as they think they have the chance. But I remember that the drive here took us two fucking hours and I’m pretty fucking sure that if I do make it past all the goddamned assassins in this school—which is a pretty fucking unlikely occurrence—that I’ll find myself stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere.

          I get sick of that shit in movies because real life isn’t that fucking simple. It’s not like you can find yourself in shit like this and then expect to be able to fucking waltz your way out without getting fucking killed. Let one of the other scholarship students play the fucking hero.

          Right now, I’m trying to figure out how the fuck I’m going to convince Howie that I’m worth more to him alive because I don’t want to fucking die. I mean, I get that I have four fucking years to convince him I’m valuable, but I don’t have a fucking clue who the guy actually is. And if I couldn’t fucking figure that out in the last three years, how am I supposed to figure that shit out now?

          The situation seems pretty fucking hopeless to me. But I don’t really have the time to dwell on it, because all of a sudden there’s another fucking assassin standing in front of me but he’s not focused on me. No, his attention is completely on Talon.

          And Talon is still sniffling, but it’s a lot less than it was. At least she can fucking speak like a normal fucking person again.

          “Talon,” the guy says, and I can’t help but look at him. He’s 5’6” with brown crew-cut hair and he’s stocky. He’s pretty fucking normal-looking aside from the aura of danger that is fucking crackling around him. And there’s the fact that his clothes make him stand the fuck out.

          He’s wearing dark red denim jeans and a red tee that’s just a shade lighter than the fucking jeans. It’s pretty fucking obvious to me that he wears the red for the same reason I wear black—to hide the fucking blood he gets on them—but I got a fucking feeling that this guy spills a lot more blood than I ever fucking will.

          “Gabriel,” Talon says, and it comes out sounding as weak as the girl looks. “Why?”

          A flash of annoyance crosses Gabriel’s face. I guess he ain’t as fucking good at dealing with people as Howie is. “Why what?” he asks, like he ain’t got a fucking clue in the world why Talon is upset.

          “Why would you do this to me?” she asks. And now she’s crying for real; tears are streaming down her face, but at least this time she’s not trying to fucking stop them. “Why would you set me up for something like this? What did I ever do to you?”

          I’m wondering what the hell the guy is going to say to her, because it’s pretty fucking obvious that he doesn’t give a shit about her. I mean, I guess it’s kinda crappy of me to want to listen to how he talks to the girl who he fooled into thinking he was friends with, considering the reason I want to hear his answer is so I can maybe get a fucking clue as to how these fuckers think.

          “Because you were the best choice,” Gabriel says.

          “How?”

          He shrugs. “Your family wasn’t going to miss you. You hated where you were and wanted to get away from your life. And you’ve got self-confidence. Those were the things I was told to watch people for. You were the first who fit the requirements.”

          Fuck. He is so fucking clinical as he tells her this shit that it makes me wince a little in fucking sympathy. But now I am starting to understand why the fuck Howie chose me as his target practice.

          Because I fit all that shit to a T. There’s no one in my fucking hometown that is going to miss me. I mean, Jess might a little fucking bit, but she’s probably fucking happy that I managed to get away from my crappy ass family more than she is fucking worried about what I might have gotten myself into.

          I mean, my family definitely isn’t going to miss me. I’m sure my fucking parents are celebrating the fact that I’m not around to fuck shit up for them anymore. And Ry—well, I was never a brother in his fucking eyes anyway. I was always just the guy who lived at his fucking house that he went out of his way to avoid as much as he could.

          And yeah. I fucking wanted to get the fuck away from my old life, because I fucking hated the shit I had to put up with at home, at school, and every fucking where else. The only reprieve I ever had from all the bullshit I went through were the weekends I spent with Howie and Jess, and those Saturdays were the fucking high point of my life.

          Self-confidence. That was the third thing Gabriel mentioned. Well, shit. It ain’t like I’m fucking lacking in that department either. I mean, I like to fucking fight. To the point I guess it could be called a goddamned addiction, because I was fighting every fucking Wednesday night. And considering how often I won and how little I lost, well—that right there’s a pretty fucking big confidence booster.

          But I ain’t going to fucking lie—the assassin fuckers at this school scare the fucking shit out of me. Because they all hold themselves in a way I ain’t ever fucking seen before. It’s aggression, but it’s fucking muted, because as far as I can tell, they don’t fucking move an inch of their bodies unless they have to. When someone is that fucking tightly coiled, I know for fucking sure that I ain’t got shit on them.

          But Gabriel, man, he doesn’t have a fucking clue how to talk to a girl because Talon just starts crying harder at the words he fucking says.          “But how could you do this to me?” she wails. “I thought we were friends!”

          Gabriel looks bored, and, if I’m reading him right, a little bit uncertain. Like he’s not fucking sure how he’s supposed to handle this. I’m guessing he ain’t never seen Talon cry before, because from what I’ve gathered about her this fucking far is that she ain’t a big fucking crier. Not with the way she tried so desperately to hold the goddamned tears back when we first got told the fucking news.

          Howie apparently sees something in Gabriel’s stance or expression that I am completely fucking oblivious to, because the next thing I know Howie is in front of me again but this time he’s put himself between Gabriel and Talon and his back is fucking turned to me.

          It’s like he ain’t got no fucking concern in the world that one of the four of us is going to try shit. I guess it’s more like it doesn’t matter if one of us does try something, because I got a feeling he will put an end to it real fucking fast.

          “Gabriel,” Howie says. “Calm down.”

          I try not to flinch, but I can’t fucking help it. If one of these assassins has a quick fucking temper, I don’t want to be anywhere near them. I ain’t looking to get caught in the middle of something that gets me killed prematurely. I’m already fucking looking at the very real possibility of dying before I hit 18; I got no fucking desire to see my life ended any fucking earlier than it has to be.

          Gabriel focuses on Howie in front of him and I see expressions on his face that he never fucking showed to Talon. It must be something these fuckers are taught—that they can be open with each other but not with fucking normal people. He’s speaking really fucking low, but I’ve got pretty fucking good hearing, so I’m able to make out the fucking conversation.

          “She’s crying, Howard. I can’t take the crying. It makes me angry. I chose her because she didn’t cry. I don’t know how to make her stop.”

          Howie places a hand on each of Gabriel’s shoulders and presses down hard. “If you don’t calm down,” he says. “You’re going to fail before our freshman year even starts. Is that what you want? Do you want me to have to go to your father and tell him that you were unable to control yourself on the very first day of school?”

          Howie’s tone is _mean_ , but it apparently does the fucking trick, because Gabriel nods and takes one deep breath. Whatever fucking panic Howie read that is gone—and I’m still fucking clueless as to what it is my ex-friend saw in Gabriel’s face in the first goddamned place.

          “No,” Gabriel says. “I’m okay now. Thanks, Howard.”

          Howard nods. Then he takes his hands off Gabriel and turns around. For a second, I think he’s leaning in towards me again, like earlier, but no—this time, he’s face to face with Talon. Closer, really, ‘cuz he touches his forehead to hers, which makes her flinch, but it’s not like she can go any fucking where to escape him.

          “What’s your name?” he asks, and I swear, it fucking _sounds_ like he actually wants to know. Shit. I find myself admiring his skills for a second before I remember that he is a goddamned killer.

          “T-Talon,” she stammers.

          “Talon,” Howie says, tasting it out. “That’s an interesting name.”

          I can’t fucking tell if he’s serious or genuine, but that’s nothing fucking unusual. I’ve never been able to tell that shit for the three fucking years I’ve known him.

          “T-thank y-you,” Talon manages, and her tears are slowly stopping.

          “I know you’re upset right now,” Howie says, and I’m thrown by how fucking _sincere_ he sounds. “But Gabriel really doesn’t like it when girls cry.”

          “I’m sorry,” Talon says, like it’s her fucking fault that she’s in this fucking mess. Like she’s fucking sorry that she can’t handle the situation better than she’s managing. Damn, but Howie’s got some fucking skill at this shit.

          “It’s okay,” Howie says, voice soothing. “Gabriel chose you to come to this school with him because he likes your personality. I know it seems very strange right now, but all of us are hoping that the person we picked won’t end up disappointing us. None of us really want to kill the people we chose, but we won’t have a choice if they turn out to be disappointments. And Gabriel chose you because he felt you wouldn’t disappointment him. He thinks you’re capable of coping with this without being hysterical. You don’t want to disappoint him on your first day here, do you?”

          And like fucking magic, Talon stops crying. She wipes a hand over her eyes and it’s like she was never fucking upset—except for the fact that her eyes are still fucking red as shit and her cheeks are a bit puffy from where she has been crying. But there’s newfound determination in her eyes. “No,” she says softly.

          Howie waits a second before he moves back from her; I guess he was waiting to make sure she wasn’t going to continue with the fucking hysterics or something. But when he does move back, Talon looks straight at Gabriel and she says, “I don’t really understand how all of this works, but I won’t cry again. I was just in shock.”

          Gabriel, on his part, looks faintly amused but completely appeased. “It’s fine, Talon,” he says. “We’ve got the next four years to figure this out.”

          She nods, but I can tell from the tense set of her body that she is not fucking happy about any of this. She’s going along with what Howie told her because Howie gave her the only fucking lifeline available and she, like the rest of us, doesn’t want to fucking die.

          “Come on,” Gabriel says to her. “We’re going to be roommates for the next four years, so we might as well get settled in.”

          I can tell as she gets up that she really doesn’t want to go with him, because she doesn’t want to be alone with the fucking guy, and I can’t really blame her. But she does get up, and I admire her for having the fucking guts to follow him out of the gym with her head held high. Good on her. We might be in the fucking worst situation in the fucking world, but we might as well hold on to our goddamned pride. It’s the only fucking thing we got left.

          But the things Howie said to her… I want to know if they are the fucking truth or if he was just spouting bullshit. I’m about to lose my fucking chance to ask, though, because Howie has turned his back and is starting to walk away.

          “Howie,” I say, low, because I don’t want the other assassins to hear me call him that. I’m pretty sure that they don’t fucking use that name with him, considering I heard Gabriel call him Howard.

          Howie turns back to me like it was what he was planning to do all along and instead of standing in front of me this time, he sits down in the seat beside me-the one Talon just vacated. “What’s up, Jake?” he asks.

          The tone fucking throws me for a second, because _this_ is the Howie I’ve known for three goddamned years. “What you said to her, is any of that true?”

          He doesn’t speak for a couple minutes and I’m starting to feel like I’ve offended him. But before I can open my mouth and fucking apologize, he’s speaking. “Yes and no,” he says.

          “Yes and no?” I echo, because that doesn’t tell me fucking anything I need to know.

          I luck out, because Howie is willing to elaborate. “Most of us, myself included, chose people we felt have the potential to be great allies for us. I chose you because you’re strong-willed, independent, and you’re willing to fight for what you believe in. But I also chose you because you have a pretty unique code of honor that I think might allow you to succeed here where so many other people have failed.”

          I’ll be honest—I’m a little fucking creeped out by what Howie’s just said to me, but I’m also feeling strangely touched. It’s nice to fucking know that he didn’t choose me just to kill me off, but because he thinks I can prove myself to be a fucking useful asset. Granted, that still makes me a goddamned tool, and I don’t have any fucking clue how useful I can be or what kind of tool an assassin needs that they don’t already fucking have.

          “Nice to know you didn’t bring me here just to kill me,” I say, droll. “But what’s the ‘no’ part?”

          “Well,” Howie says, and he sighs. “Not all of the assassins did what I suggested when they went to their middle schools. Instead of recruiting people with potential, they recruited people they knew wouldn’t make it, so that they will be able to kill them easily when graduation time rolls around.”

          “Okay,” I say. Then another thing occurs to me. “Are you the leader here?” I ask, because I really want to know where I fucking stand.

          He smiles at me, but it’s a tight smile full irritation and anger. “Yes and no,” he says, picking himself up from his seat. “If you watch long enough, Jake, some of your questions will answer themselves.”

          I glare at his back as he walks away from me, but at least I can stop panicking so fucking much. If Howie really meant what he said to Talon and if the words he just said to me about why he chose me are true, then I can relax a little fucking bit. Not much, but at least I can relax fucking enough to be able to breathe and unclench my goddamn fists.

          When I do that, though, I fucking hiss in pain, because I’ve dug my nails so goddamned deep into my palms that it fucking hurts to pull them back out and I have four deep crescent marks on each palm with blood fucking pooled around them. Yeah, so when I can’t fight when I’m angry, I get a little fucking self-destructive, but that’s only so that I can keep my goddamned self-control.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

          It isn’t until every other scholarship student has been paired off with the assassin that vetted them that Howie comes back to me. We’re the only two people left in the fucking gym and it is the first time I have been alone with him since the last fucking Saturday I saw him.

          “So,” he says. “You’re taking this a lot more calmly than I expected.”

          “I’m not fucking calm at all,” I say, feeling like it’s finally safe for me to talk to him the way I’ve always talked to him. Around all those other assassins I felt like it would’ve been wrong somehow to talk to him the way I’ve talked to him for the past three years.

          He raises an eyebrow at me and before I can blink, he has my hands in his and turns them over so he can look at them. I don’t even have time to even fucking think about resisting—not that I would’ve resisted anyone. When someone has me fucking bested, I don’t fucking mess with them.

          “Wow,” he says. “I think that’s the deepest I’ve ever seen you cut yourself with your nails.”

          I snort. “Yeah, well, I don’t usually have to sit in a room fucking full of assassins. Sorry if it made me a little fucking tense.”

          He drops my hands. “I’m a little surprised you didn’t try to fight anyone.” He nods towards my hands. “You usually don’t do that to your hands unless you’re itching to fight and trying to hold yourself back.”

          I wince. He definitely knows me well. “I’m not saying I wasn’t itching to fucking fight, because a touch of violence would be a great source of fucking stress-relief right now, but I don’t pick fights with people I know for a fucking fact will kill me if I try.”

          “Smart,” Howie says. “I’m still surprised at your reaction though. All the other scholarship students feel betrayed. I can’t even remember how many of them I had to talk out of hysterics to keep them getting themselves killed today.”

          “You told me not to expect anything from you, Howie, and then you fucking told me to remember that you’d said that shit to me the first day we met. I’ve got no reason to feel betrayed by you, because you never fucking said to me that you thought we were friends.”

          Howie stares at me thoughtfully. “Yes,” he says. “I did tell you all of that, but most people would have shrugged it off, not taken it at face value. I’m just trying to wrap my mind around the fact that you actually did.”

          I roll my eyes. “I ain’t never been the kind of person to look for things that don’t fucking exist,” I tell him. “You said don’t expect shit from me. I didn’t expect shit from you. And I sure as shit didn’t expect all this.” I motion at the gym, but I’m pretty sure he understands that I’m telling him that I didn’t fucking expect to find out that he was a goddamned assassin.

          “You’re the only person I know of,” he says slowly, “who hasn’t felt betrayed by hearing Mariah Young’s Orientation speech.”

          I shrug. “I’ve always been different from every fucking body else. It ain’t no fucking surprise to me that I’m the first person to react differently.”

          Howie grins at me. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll expect your word at face value for right now. Come on. I’ll show you to our room.”

          I follow him and I can’t help but feel a spark of hope. If Howie is still the same Howie I knew when it’s just him and me, what exactly does that mean? Is his “Howard” persona just the fucking mask he wears for the assassin students? I don’t fucking get any of this shit right now.

          And it’s been a pretty long fucking day, so I ain’t got no fucking problems following Howie up to our room. I’m ready to pass the fuck out and try to figure all this shit out tomorrow instead of trying to jam all of the “figuring out” shit into one fucking day.

          The room he leads me to is nothing like the fucking guest rooms that me, Talon, Marvin, and Alan ended up staying in last night. This room a lot fucking smaller, for one thing, but it’s a lot more fucking luxurious than it has any fucking right to be.

          There are two beds, both singles, and they are across the fucking room from each other. Thank fuck. At least I’ll be able to get a little fucking privacy this way. There are computer desks beside both beds and I’m a little fucking relieved to see that I get my own laptop.

          Howie notices me looking at the computer. “There’s no internet access here,” he says. “We can’t run the risk that one of you will contact someone in the outside world.”

          “I thought you chose us because no one in the outside world fucking cares if we disappear.” I’m not really all that disappointed not to have internet. I’ve never been one for fucking around on computers anyway. Then I realize that I still have my phone and fish it out of my pocket. “What about this shit?” I ask. I look at the signal bar. “It looks like I can still make calls if I want to.”

          Howie shrugs, completely unconcerned. “There are scramblers that interfere with any scholarship student who tries to call out.” He pulls his own phone out of his pocket and waves it at me. “I have a special code that lets me bypass those scramblers, as does every other assassin here.” He gives me a dark look that promises pain if I try to mess with his phone.

          I hold my hands out. “I ain’t going to try and fuck with your phone, Howie. I’m not fucking stupid.”

          He thinks about that for a second. “Yeah,” he says softly, “you’re right. I wouldn’t have chosen you if I thought you were stupid.”

          I snort. “Is that supposed to fucking make me feel better or some shit? ‘Cuz last time I checked, I still have to fucking share this room with you for four years and hope I can fucking keep you from killing me.” I’m terrified and that’s coming out as bravado; of course it fucking is—I’ve survived my entire life by fucking putting on a front for the rest of the goddamned world.

          Howie smiles at me and it isn’t a nice fucking smile. “No,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel better, Jake. And I don’t think you believe that I’m actually capable of being nice, so I’m guessing that you’re talking to me the way you are right now because you’re scared.”

          I flinch, but I can’t deny it when he states it so fucking casually. “Yeah,” I say, and my voice is a little fucking hoarse because my throat’s gone dry. “I am fucking terrified.”

          He nods and it takes me a second to realize he’s just given me his fucking approval. “Good,” he says. “If you’re scared, that means you have a higher chance of staying alive.”

          “Glad to hear that,” I say, and I can’t help but be snarky. I mean, fuck. Twenty-four hours ago I was convinced that my life was going to be getting a whole fucking lot better, but no. I should’ve fucking known better than that. My life is never fucking anything but shit.

          I guess I was just too fucking desperate to get away from my fucking family to really think about what the fuck I was doing. I should’ve paid more fucking attention to the fact that I was the only person who put in an application to Aifam Academy at my middle school. But at the same fucking time, the only fucking person I ever talked to there who was my age was Howie, and he told me that it was a good fucking idea.

          Fuck. I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now. I never expected shit from Howie, because he never expected shit from me. But I’m starting to fucking wonder if maybe somewhere inside me I do feel a little bit betrayed by all this bullshit. But how would I fucking know what that shit feels like?

          I mean, I’m pretty fucking sure I wouldn’t be able to tell the goddamned difference considering the shit I’ve been through with my fucking family. My mother betrayed me when I was fucking eight years old and I’ve been fucking furious with her ever since. But I still fucking did what I could to help her out around the house, even though none of that shit ever fucking mattered to her.

          My dad has fucking always hated me, because I’m the fucking son he never even wanted. If I’d been born without a fucking penis, maybe things would’ve been different, but life didn’t work out that way. So my dad fucking doted on Ryan and ignored me completely. I doubt he’s even fucking realized that I’m not at the fucking house anymore.

          And Ry—well, I don’t even fucking remember a time when the two of us even tried to fucking act like brothers to each other. I just stayed the fuck away from him and he stayed the fuck away from me and we never fucking talked. For all I know, Ry’s fucking glad I’m gone.

          Hell, I only even call the fucker Ry because I know it pisses him the fuck off. He doesn’t like the fact that I give everyone I know nicknames. I can’t fucking help it. I don’t like long names. At least my parents did me the fucking favor of giving me a simple fucking name that takes no fucking time at all to say. Four letters, one syllable. Ain’t no fucking name more beautiful than that.

          Fuck. I mean, Jess is short for Jessica, because I fucking hate long names. I’m pretty fucking sure that I’m the only person who can get away with calling her that though, because I’ve heard a couple of her fucking addicts try that shit with her and she doesn’t tolerate it at fucking all.

          And Howie… well, it’s pretty much fucking impossible to break _Howard_ down to one fucking syllable without calling someone “Ho” or “How” and both of those just sound fucking wrong. I ain’t calling a guy a ho for no fucking reason and “How” is a fucking question, not a goddamned name.

          My family’s been treating me like fucking shit since I was eight fucking years old and throwing me under buses for my entire fucking life. And I’ve never gotten very involved with other people’s fucking shit. I mean, Jess has her dealing shit, but I don’t fuck around with that. She talks about it and I get after her for spreading fucking drugs, but it ain’t done with any kind of fucking heat.

          Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve always been on my fucking own that is allowing me to take this new fucking situation more calmly than all the other fuckers in this school that are here on a fucking scholarship. I don’t get involved with people because I fucking expect them to fuck me over. So this is just fucking par for the course. It’s hard to feel betrayed by someone when the only fucking thing you’re ever used to from other people is them throwing you under the bus for some fucking reason you can’t ever fucking hope to understand.

          “What are you thinking, Jake?” Howie asks. “It’s a little unusual for you to be this quiet.”

          I snort. “It ain’t nothing major,” I tell him. “Just the usual shit.”

          He raises an eyebrow at me. “And that would be what?”

          I shake my head at him. “Fuck, Howie. Ain’t you figured that shit out by now? My life fucking blows. Ain’t nothing fucking unusual about that.”

          He stares at me for a second, then chuckles quietly. “You’re the weirdest person I have ever met in my life,” he says.

          It’s my turn to raise an eyebrow at him. “Oh yeah?” I say. “Then I guess we’re pretty fucking evenly matched, because I’d have to say that you’re the fucking weirdest person I know. It’s not every day a person finds out that someone they’ve been hanging out with for three years is a fucking assassin.”

          Howie’s listening to me pretty intently and it takes me a second to figure out the fucking reason for that. He’s trying to see if I’m choosing different words than I would normally use in order to placate him or not. But I ain’t that fucking kind of person. Maybe he doesn’t fucking remember, but I have a fucking code of honor and one of the items on that goddamned list is not to lie without a damned good reason.

          Granted, maybe this is a situation where lying would fucking qualify, considering it could save my fucking life, but I don’t think that’s going to fly with Howie. Maybe one of the other assassins in this school want to be lied to, but Howie has never been that kind of fucking person. As far as I fucking remember, Howie fucking hates being lied to. And I ain’t about to lie to someone who can fucking kill me with a finger. I’m not that goddamned stupid and I’m not fucking suicidal.

          “So you don’t consider me a friend anymore?” Howie asks, meeting my eyes squarely.

          I met him on the same fucking level. “I always considered you my friend, you fucker,” I tell him. “But I never for one second thought that you considered me yours, because you fucking told me not to expect anything from you.”

          Howie shakes his head slowly. “I’m sorry, I’m not usually the type to get hung up over something so trivial, but I’m just boggled by the fact that you really don’t seem to be all that upset about being here.” He smiles faintly. “You seem like the same person I’ve known for the last three years, so I’m having trouble seeing how learning about this is affecting you.” His tone is almost apologetic, which is really fucking weird, considering he’s the one in the room holding all the fucking power.

          I sigh and rub my temples. I’m starting to get a fucking headache from all this shit and I really just want to lay the fuck down and go to sleep, even if it is only 4 in the afternoon. “Howie, I don’t know what the fuck you want me to tell you. I don’t feel like you betrayed me because I never trusted you. But that’s pretty fucking normal for me, because I don’t trust any fucking body.”

          He seems slightly appeased by that, but also a little offended. “I thought I played a trustworthy friend very well over the last few years,” he says.

          I laugh at him. “You’re a fucking idiot,” I say. But I backtrack pretty fucking quick when I see his eyes start to narrow. Fuck. I don’t want to piss him off. “I mean, I never suspected any of this about you, Howie. I always thought you were a fucking goodie two-shoe kind of guy because you were always fucking helping everyone you came across. So yeah, you seemed like you were fucking trustworthy, but like I said, I don’t fucking trust anyone. Not even Jess, and I’ve known her for a hell of a lot longer than I have known you.”

          That appeases him and I breathe a fucking sigh of relief. Shit. I got to be careful what I fucking say to him. I ain’t got no fucking interest of pissing Howie off again—I haven’t had any interest in pissing him off since the one and only fucking time I managed it during middle school, and now that I know he’s a fucking assassin I really don’t want to fucking make him mad.

          “Okay,” he says. “That I can believe. Now, I’ll give you a choice. We can go eat dinner in the lunchroom with all of the other students or we can skip that and I can tell you a little bit more about how the curriculum works here.”

          My stomach rumbles. Fuck. I’d almost forgotten I hadn’t eaten anything. No one gave us breakfast this morning, probably because the school administration didn’t want to risk having lots of students being violently sick all over the fucking gym floor after we learned the horrible fucking truth about this place.

          “I want to know more about this place,” I admit, “but I am fucking starving. Any chance we can get food here?”

          Howie rolls his eyes at me. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll go grab our dinner from the cafeteria.” He narrows his eyes at me. “I’m going to leave the door to our room unlocked. If I find you gone when I get back, I will hunt you down and make you beg for mercy. After all, the school doesn’t care if I torture my roommate before graduation. I just can’t kill you.”

          He says all that shit like it doesn’t even faze him, but it makes me feel fucking sick at my stomach and all of a sudden I don’t want to fucking eat after all. “I won’t leave,” I choke out, the sudden fear I’m feeling making it really fucking hard to get words out.

          “Good,” he says, and then he’s gone.

          I stare at the door he exited from and wish I had the fucking courage to try it, but I don’t. I know I fucking don’t. Because the way Howie talked about torture like it was child’s play was fucking terrifying. And I already know there’s no fucking way to escape this place. Besides, for all I fucking know, this is some sick test that Howie’s giving me to make sure that I can fucking stay put or some shit.

          Whatever. I’m not going to give him a fucking reason to torture me, so I throw myself onto the bed that I’m going to be sleeping in for the next four fucking years and close my eyes, trying to envision the poster that has hung above my bed back at home in order to help me calm the fuck down.

          Fifteen minutes go by before Howie gets back to the room. I hear him enter, but I don’t fucking bother to get up. I do open my eyes to watch him move around, though, and I’m slightly irritated by the fact that he fucking checks the door for something that isn’t fucking there, because I didn’t try to fucking leave.

          “I’m impressed, Jake,” he says. “I thought you’d try to run at the first opportunity.”

          My stomach rolls as the torture he mentions pops back into my head. “I ain’t fucking stupid,” I mutter.

          “No, you’re not,” he says and he hands me a sandwich. “Here. It’s ham and cheese. I know it’s not your favorite, but it’s the only thing the cafeteria was willing to give me since I told them I wouldn’t be coming to lunch with the rest of the students.”

          “Thanks,” I say, and now that the sandwich is in my hands, I don’t fucking care that Howie just threatened me with torture. I unwrap the food and wolf the sandwich down in a few bites. “Fuck, that’s better.”

          Howie shakes his head at me in silent amusement as he eats his own sandwich at a much more delicate pace. “Why didn’t you try to leave?” he asks.

          Fuck. The question threatens to make my food come crawling back up my throat. “’Cuz I know I can’t fucking outrun you, Howie. And I ain’t got no interest in being tortured.”

          He raises an eyebrow at me and says, pointedly, “I can torture you whenever I like, Jake.”

          It’s such an off-hand comment that it takes a moment for it to register properly. Fuck. My hands start shaking, because I don’t fucking know what to expect with Howie. “I-“ My throat closes and I can’t say what the fuck I’m thinking, because I am too fucking scared. The truth is, knowing that I might end up dead in four fucking years is a whole lot less scary than the idea that Howie can torture me any fucking time he wants to.

          Howie smiles at me across the room, clearly amused by my distress. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I only torture people when they give me a reason to.” A look of distaste crosses his face. “I can’t say the same about some of the other assassins in this school, but I have no taste for blood sports when I can avoid them.”

          Suddenly I feel like I can fucking breathe again. Because the truth of the matter is that I don’t fucking know this guy sitting across from me, not really. I know who he’s pretended to be for the last three fucking years, but I don’t know anything about who he really fucking is. And that’s a bit of a fucking problem, because that means I don’t fucking know how to handle him or how to react to his comments.

          “Now,” Howie says, “tell me. Why are you so afraid of being tortured?”

 

 

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

          I stare at him, speechless. Is he fucking kidding me? Why the hell would he even ask me a fucking question like that?

          He taps his foot and raises an eyebrow at me. “I assure you, Jake, that while I may be a fairly patient person, I _hate_ it when people don’t answer my questions in a timely fashion.” He smiles at me and it’s the cruelest smile I have ever fucking seen in my life.

          But the words and the cruel smile are enough to get me to fucking talk. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t really like the idea of being at the mercy of someone else who is able to inflict pain on me whenever they fucking choose. I don’t like the idea of not having any fucking choice.”

          Howie nods thoughtfully, then he says, “If you don’t answer a question I put to you within fifteen seconds, I will torture you.” And it’s another one of those off-hand fucking comments, but the contents of the statement make the color bleed from my face. “Do you understand me?”

          “Yes,” I say, as quickly as a fucking whip. “I understand.”

          “Good. Now. Tell me, Jake. What parts of your body are most sensitive?”

          That question does not fucking help ease the terror I’m feeling. “M-my feet,” I manage to say in the new fifteen second window. Fuck. I am shaking like a goddamned leaf. And I just know that Howie is fucking enjoying this, because I can see his fucking expression across the room. He is fucking delighted that I am so fucking scared of him right now. “Why do you want to know this?” I ask, and my voice almost breaks on the question.

          He gives me one of my own “are you fucking stupid” looks and says, “It’s quite simple, Jake. When you fail to answer a question properly or when you fail to live up to my expectations, I plan on torturing you in order to teach you a lesson. And I believe in being incredibly thorough. I’m giving you the chance to tell me right now what the most sensitive parts of your body are yourself so that I don’t have to torture you without cause in order to find that information out first hand.”

          I’m not trying to hide how bad I’m shaking anymore and I can feel tears starting to form in my eyes. I am so fucking scared that I am surprised I haven’t passed out from fight like a fucking pussy. I swallow hard and force myself to answer him. “My feet are the most sensitive,” I say, somehow managing to get the words past my lips. “Followed by my ankles and my hips.” My voice cracks on the last word. “How much do you want to know about this?” It comes out in a near-whisper.      

          Howie shrugs. “What you’ve told me so far is sufficient,” he says. He smiles. “I am glad that I chose you as my roommate, Jake. I can tell that you are going to really make an effort to keep me from being disappointed with you and that makes me feel pretty good about having chosen you for this scholarship.”

          “T-hanks,” I say, and I’m embarrassed as shit that I’m not able to keep myself from fucking stammering.

          “No problem,” Howie says. “However, you should know that I am not going to go easy on you and that you should expect me to demand quite a lot out of you at all times. If you fuck up, I will torture you. If you fuck up twice, I will torture you. Basically, if you fuck up at all, I will torture you until you are begging me for mercy that will never come.” He leans forward and stares at me.

          I can’t help it; the intensity of his gaze makes me fucking flinch violently and I scoot backwards on my bed. “I’ll try and live up to your expectations, Howie,” I say.

          He nods. “Good. Now, there are some things about this school that I think it’s important for you to know.”

          “Okay,” I say. “I’m listening.”

          Howie smiles at me and it’s the same cruel smile he used earlier when he was talking about torturing me like it was as easy as spreading butter on toast. “You better be,” he says. “Because I’m going to be quizzing you afterwards. And if you fuck up—well, you tell me what will happen.”

          I don’t even fucking hesitate, even though it’s not really a goddamned question. “You’ll torture me,” I say, and this time my voice doesn’t break. Fuck. I want to run now, but I’ve already lost that fucking chance. Well, to be fair, I’ve never had that fucking chance, because running means being caught. And being caught—well, I know enough about Howie to know he’s not fucking lying about what he’s willing to do. So being caught means torture. That means attempting to run means torture. Fuck. Basically anything I fucking do that Howie doesn’t approve of means fucking torture.

          I shiver in fear and force myself to pay attention to Howie as he starts explaining how the school works. For the first fucking time in my life, I feel like I actually need to pay attention to a lesson someone’s teaching me, because for the first fucking time in my life, it is my actual goddamned _life_ that is on the fucking line if I don’t fucking listen.

          “Good,” Howie says. “I’m glad you’re paying attention.” He leans forward, eyes intent on my face. “I know you’re scared right now, Jake, and I want you to remember what it feels like.” He smiles and leans back in his chair. “Can you do that for me?”

          “Yes,” I say. My hands are still fucking shaking. Of course I will be able to fucking remember what it feels like to be this afraid, because I’ve never been this fucking terrified in my entire goddamned life. “I can do that.” I’m surprised my voice doesn’t break, because I can’t stop fucking shaking.

          Howie nods. “Good,” he says. “You can relax now, Jake. While I am capable of torturing you for any reason I deem appropriate, I will not do so unless you manage to do something that seriously upsets the balance around the school.”

          I stare at him. What the fuck? First he tells me he’s going to torture me for anything he views as a fucking disappointment and now he’s telling me he won’t torture me after all? “I’m confused,” I say. At least the fucking tremors in my hands are stopping. Being confused is a pretty fucking good remedy for clearing out the goddamned fear I was feeling. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m still plenty fucking scared, but not like before. The fear is fading to a sort of dull throb in the back of my head.

          “I imagine you would be,” Howie says. He seems so goddamned professional it makes me want to throttle him. How the fuck can he sit there and be so goddamned calm about all this fucking shit? “Let me tell you the truth, Jake,” he says. “I don’t have any plans to torture you at all. But I felt like you needed to understand exactly what I am capable of.”

          “Okay,” I say, but I still don’t really fucking get it. If he doesn’t plan on torturing me, then why the fuck would he threaten me with it? “Howie, I ain’t got no fucking clue what it is you want from me.”

          He smiles. “That’s why we’re having this conversation,” he says. “Because I am going to tell you exactly what it is I want from you.” He pauses for effect, then adds, “And if you manage to do it, then I will let you live.”

          I stare at him. I’m aware that my jaw has fucking come unhinged, but I can’t fucking help it because holy fucking hell. Howie’s handing me the fucking key to my own goddamned life. I ain’t got no fucking clue as to why, but I’m not about to fucking turn it down. “Okay,” I say. “I’m listening.”

          His expression turns serious. “You need to understand that every other assassin in this school will not hesitate to torture you if you piss one of them off, Jake,” he says. “And according to the school rules, they will not be penalized for torturing you, as long as they don’t torture you until you die.”

          I shiver. I don’t want no one to fucking torture me. “So how do I keep that from fucking happening?” I ask. I’m aware I’m swearing at him again, but I can’t fucking help it. I’m scared and angry and confused as hell and I think I got the fucking right to swear at him, especially since he doesn’t seem to fucking mind.

          “Mostly by staying out of their way,” Howie admits. “But that’s not going to be as easy as it sounds, considering my position.”

          “Are you their fucking leader or something?”

          He gives me a tired smile. “Something like that,” he says. “It’s a little bit more complicated,” he adds, when I give him one of my impatient looks. “There are three factions among the assassins. The North faction, the Tanner faction, and the Cornell faction. As I’m sure you can guess, I’m the leader of the North faction.”

          “Okay,” I say. “I still don’t see what the fuck any of this has to do with me.”

          “Be patient,” he snaps

I swear my heart fucking skips a beat when he looks at me like that. Fuck. I’m pushing his goddamned patience and there’s no fucking way for me to know how far I can push him before he’s had enough. And I ain’t got no fucking desire to push him past that point right now. Not after he just got fucking through threatening to fucking torture me if I did anything at all to disappoint him or piss him off. Fuck. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not trying to rush you.” And I mean that. I really don’t have any desire to rush him, because I don’t want him to fucking lose his temper at me.

He sighs. “I didn’t mean to snap at you, Jake,” he says, leaning forward so that his head is propped up by one of his arms that is resting on the top of his knee. “There’s a lot of things that you don’t know about this school that I need to tell you before the night is over. And it’s going to seem like way too information at once, but I don’t really have much of a choice. Because the other two factions I mentioned are doing the best they can to keep me from becoming the leader of the assassin community.”

“Oh,” I say, swallowing. I don’t fucking know what to say to that. How the fuck am I supposed to know anything about the goddamned politics of the shit that goes on between fucking assassins?

“I’ve been working on recruiting people to my faction since I started school here when I was five,” Howie informs me. “Out of the three factions, mine is the most humane.” I make a face at him and he laughs. “Oh yes, Jake, I am perfectly aware of the irony. Humane assassins. It definitely seems like a bad punch line.”

He leans forward, eyes dancing with excitement. “I want to change the way that assassins operate by setting up guidelines for the community to go by. I know it seems strange and probably doesn’t make any sense to you, but right now there aren’t a lot of guidelines except for the ones suggested by this school. And those aren’t really enforced.”         

“What I want to do is get rid of the scholarship program, because I think it is cruel to assassins and scholarship students alike. I know for a fact that all the assassins at this school that are in my faction feel as strongly as I do about this. None of us want to kill the people we vetted from the middle schools we chose to attend, because all of us became friends with those people.”

Howie smiles sadly. “I’m sorry I never said it properly to you before, Jake, but I’ve considered you my best friend for the last three years.”

I don’t know what to fucking say, because he never fucking gave me any indication that he felt we were best friends at any point during the last three years. But I clear my throat and ask the first question that pops to mind. “Then why did you bring me here?”

Exhaustion etches itself onto his face. “I didn’t have a choice,” he says. “I’m the leader of the North faction, but it’s still just a group of teenagers. We don’t have a voice in the larger assassin community and until we become adults ourselves, the adults won’t listen to anything we have to say. And I can’t change the assassin community if I get kicked out of it by refusing to abide by its rules and right now the only real hard rule that exists is that the children of assassins have to attend Aifam Academy before they can join the rest of the assassin community.”

“What do the other two factions want?”

Howie grimaces. The subject is obviously distasteful to him, but he still speaks about it. “The Tanner faction wants to get rid of this school entirely, because they feel like it’s a waste of time. All they want to do is learn how to kill and then go out in the world and leave trails of bodies in their wake. They have no interest in learning how to interact with the rest of the human population.”

“And the Cornell faction?”

“They are the ones who support the existence of the school and its current curriculum. They have no interest in changing anything about it and are fine with the vetting process.” His face darkens. “You need to stay away from the assassins that belong to one of the other two factions, because none of them have any qualms about killing scholarship students. The only thing that holds them back is the threat of not being able to kill at all if they kill now, but that’s a pretty loose restraint on an assassin.”

I swallow hard. “Okay,” I say after a minute. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all this fucking shit. “Let me get this shit straight. You’re an assassin. You want to introduce a different fucking way of life to the rest of the people who are also assassins. You don’t want to kill me, because you consider me your best friend, even though you never said anything to me about that before today, and you want me to stay the fuck away from the assassins that will kill me if I get in their way.”

Howie gives me a crooked grin. “Yep,” he says. “You pretty much have it figured out. Except,” he says, “for one thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“I need you,” he says, “to help me change the world.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapters Sixteen Through Eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a rewrite of the last scene from the last chapter at the beginning of this one, because I didn't like it. But this is an unedited, unpolished, rough draft, so please keep that in mind when you see weird things like that xD

**_Note: I don’t really like the way the last scene played out, so I’m writing an alternate version of it starting with these two paragraphs:_ **

****

_“Good,” Howie says. “I’m glad you’re paying attention.” He leans forward, eyes intent on my face. “I know you’re scared right now, Jake, and I want you to remember what it feels like.” He smiles and leans back in his chair. “Can you do that for me?”_

_“Yes,” I say. My hands are still fucking shaking. Of course I will be able to fucking remember what it feels like to be this afraid, because I’ve never been this fucking terrified in my entire goddamned life. “I can do that.” I’m surprised my voice doesn’t break, because I can’t stop fucking shaking._

 

          Howie leans forward and it is all I can fucking do not to huddle into the corner of my bed. I force myself to sit still, because I’m not a fucking pussy and even with this crazy ass shit, I am not going to run away like a goddamned coward. “Are you sure, Jake?” he asks. “Because I can give you a demonstration if you’d like.” He flashes that cruel smile at me again.

          “I’m sure,” I say.

          “I don’t know,” Howie says. “I’m not sure that you actually believe I’m willing to torture you.” He stands up and inches towards me and the fact that he is walking towards me so fucking slowly is seriously freaking me out.

          My courage snaps like a twig and I throw myself at the wall where my bed intersects with the corner of the fucking room. “I believe you,” I say, but I can barely get the fucking words out because I’m shaking so goddamned bad.

          Howie stops as soon as he gets to the edge of my bed and he’s looking at me with an amused glint in his eye. The fucking bastard is enjoying how afraid I am of him right now. “I still think a demonstration is in order,” he says, and his tone is suddenly really fucking scary.

          I’m starting to realize that I’ve found myself in a really fucking bad situation and there’s no fucking way for me to get out of it. I ain’t got no fucking place to run and no fucking desire to die, but I don’t want Howie to fucking torture me. I don’t want anyone to fucking torture me, but the idea of Howie doing it is worse than the thought of a complete fucking stranger torturing me.

          “Come here,” Howie says, and pats the edge of the bed beside his leg. The tone in his voice carries enough fucking threat in it that I know if I don’t fucking listen to him, that shit is going to get a lot fucking worse for me.

          Fuck. I’ve given up on ever getting my fucking tremors to stop and I inch forward slowly until I’m sitting on the spot that he just fucking patted. He places a hand on the top of my head and I flinch. I’m fucking terrified of what he’s going to ask me to do next, because he just fucking told me he feels like a demonstration of torture is in order. I don’t know what the fuck that’s going to entail, and I don’t really want to know, but I don’t think I have any fucking choice in the matter.

          “Give me your hand, Jake,” he says, holding one of his own out.

          I almost want to laugh, because it’s so fucking corny that he’s standing here asking me to give him my hand, but I don’t, because if I do, I won’t be able to fucking stop and I got a fucking feeling that if I get all hysterical on him right now that he’ll show me more than a fucking demonstration of what he’s capable of. I do what he says, slowly, because I don’t want my fucking hand hurt at all, but I ain’t about to do something to get him interested in torturing me full-out. Fuck that. This is fucking bad enough.

          Howie takes my hand and traces the back of it with his finger for a minute and says, thoughtfully, “I think breaking a finger or two will be enough of a demonstration for you.”

          I fucking freeze at those words, my whole body tensing. Does he expect me to fucking sit here and let me break my fingers? I don’t fucking know what to say to him to get him to stop, because I don’t fucking know how to talk to this guy.

          He looks at me, still rubbing the back of my hand. “Which fingers do you want me to break?” he asks.

          If I had any fucking color left in my face, it’s fucking gone now. “I don’t want you to break any of them,” I say, because all I can fucking think about now is how much fucking pain I’m going to feel when he breaks them. I’ve had my fingers broken before. I mean, I’m a fucking fighter, for fuck’s sake. I’ve definitely landed my share of mangled punches and broken some fingers for the fucking effort, but I ain’t never had any fingers fucking broken without the adrenaline of a fight to get me through the fucking pain of it.

          “Oh?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at me. He’s stopped tracing patterns on my fucking hand, at least, but he’s still got it fucking trapped in his. “Give me one good reason that I shouldn’t break your fingers,” he says.

          I swallow hard, racking my brain for a good fucking answer. The first one that comes to me, I’m pretty fucking sure, isn’t going to fly, but I say it anyway, because he’s already fucking told me that if I don’t answer him in fifteen seconds that it will result in being fucking tortured. “Cuz there’s no real need for you to break them,” I say. “Cuz I believe that you are willing and able to do whatever you want.” I’m not swearing at him right now, because fuck—the guy’s got my fucking hand trapped in his and I can tell just by the light fucking pressure he’s putting on it that he could snap my fucking wrist with a flick of his own.

          Howie frowns at me. “That’s not a very good reason, Jake,” he says. “You see, the problem with that answer is that I don’t really believe that you believe I’ll hurt you. I think you still see me as the guy you hung out with in middle school. I think you still me as a friend, despite your claims to the contrary.”

          My teeth are fucking chattering now, because I’m so goddamned scared. I don’t know what to fucking say to him to get him not to hurt me. I don’t know how to fucking convince him that I believe that he will fucking torture me because I’ve already said it straight out to him. And I don’t fucking lie about shit like that. So I don’t have a fucking clue what to do.

          He slides my hand up so that my fingers are cupped in his and he squeezes tightly enough to make my whole hand fucking hurt. I don’t even try to hide the fucking yelp of pain it causes, but goddamn! He has fucking ridiculously strong hands and I’m even more sure now that I don’t want to fucking give him any reason to torture me.

          “Tell me, Jake,” he says, not letting up on the fucking pressure he has on my fingers at all. “Do you think I’m playing a game with you here?” He squeezes harder and fucking tears spring to my eyes.

          “No!” I yelp. “I don’t think you’re playing a fucking game with me.”

          He squeezes even harder and I fucking swear if he puts any more goddamned pressure on my fingers all four of them are going to fucking pop. I haven’t felt pain this extreme in my entire fucking life. His hands are like a fucking vice grip squeezing down on my goddamned fingers. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to swear at me, Jake?”

          “No,” I say, panting. I’m trying to fucking find a way to breathe through the goddamned pain in my fingers, but it’s really fucking hard. “No, Howard. I’m sorry.” And I am, because I really don’t want to give him a reason to fucking break my hand.

          The pressure relaxes infinitesimally and that is such a goddamned fucking relief that I want to fucking cry, but it’s not like the pain has ended. No, it’s just a little fucking less than before.

          “Let’s make that a rule, Jake,” he says. “From now on, you don’t swear at me. If you do, I’ll hurt you. Clear?”

          “Crystal,” I say. Fuck. So now on top of having to answer his goddamned questions in fifteen seconds, I also have to stop fucking cussing when I speak to him? In case you haven’t fucking noticed, that’s pretty much an impossible fucking rule for me to follow.

          “Now,” he says. “I’ll give you one more chance to give me a good reason not to break your fingers. But if the reason you give me is as bad as the first one, I’ll break all four of them instead of just two.”

          I’m sweating like a fucking pig, because I don’t have any goddamned clue what I can say that might be considered a good fucking answer to his question. A few things occur to me, but they are worse reasons than the fucking first one I gave him, so I don’t fucking say them. Fuck. Twelve seconds in and I haven’t thought of shit. I luck out though, because at 14 fucking seconds after he stopped speaking a good fucking reason finally occurs to me. I tell him, “If you break my fingers, I won’t be any use to you.”

          Howie stills and considers my words, then nods slowly. “That’s a pretty good reason, Jake,” he says. “But you’re forgetting something pretty important.”

          I swallow. “What’s that?” I ask. I’m fucking afraid of the answer, but I still manage to force the question out of my mouth.

          “You’re not useful to me at all right now, so why should I care if I break your fingers or not?” He pauses, waiting for me to respond.

          And I do respond, though my words come out a little fucking shaky. “I may not be useful to you yet,” I say, “but I can learn to be.”

          He nods and lets my hand slip from my grasp and goes back to his seat. I cradle my hand to my chest and try not to start fucking weeping with relief. There is no fucking doubt in my mind that he would have broken all my goddamned fingers if I’d said the wrong fucking thing to him.

          Howie watches me nurse my hand and he smiles cruelly. “Well, Jake,” he says. “Now that you’ve convinced me not to demonstrate my willingness to torture you, I think we should discuss exactly how it is that you can make yourself useful to me.”

          “Okay,” I say. “I’m listening.” And I am, because I am fucking convinced that the only way I am going to make it through this goddamned school alive is by doing whatever the fuck Howie wants me to do. Hell, the only way I’m going to fucking make it to the end of the week without being fucking crippled by Howie’s willingness to torture me is by fucking listening to him.

          I’m starting to fucking realize that the only way I’m going to survive at all in this upside down fucking world is the person sitting across the fucking room from me. I may hate my fucking life right now, but there’s only one fucking person who can keep me from losing it. Yeah, it’s fucking messed up that he’s also the same fucking person responsible for taking it from me in four years, but considering the fact that my life has always been pretty fucked up, I’m not all that fucking surprised.

          Howie smiles at me. It’s not a nice smile, by any fucking stretch of the imagination, but it’s also not the fucking cruel ass smile he was wearing when he was a hairs-breadth away from crushing my fucking fingers for his own sick amusement.

          “You better be listening,” he says. “Because what I’m going to tell you may end up saving your life.”

          I sit up straight at those words. If he’s willing to share information with me that will help me in my quest to keep my fucking life, then I am definitely going to commit whatever the fuck he says to memory.

          “You see,” he says. “Aifam Academy has a lot of secrets. The truth behind the scholarship program is just the beginning.”

 

****

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Sixteen

 

          “While the scholarship program is certainly unique to Aifam Academy,” Howie continues. “There’s a lot more going on here than can be seen on the surface. You see,” he says. “There are three factions amongst the assassins and all of them want different things.”

          “I’m the leader of the North faction and the two others are the Tanner and Cornell factions. The Cornell faction and my faction agree on almost everything, but there are a couple subtle differences, while the Tanner faction is essentially the antithesis of both mine and the Cornell faction.”

          “These factions are all groups of teenagers,” Howie says. “Because the adult community doesn’t care about anything we have to say until we reach adulthood, we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands.”

          “All of us have different ideas about whether or not this school should keep being used in the way it is currently set up. My faction, the North faction, doesn’t like the current status quo. Instead of being forced to kill the scholarship students that we select during the three years we spend vetting them at the middle schools we attend, we want the curriculum changed.”

          “See, me and those assassins who are in my faction feel that assassins would benefit by having an enforcer. So we agreed before we started middle school to find strong-willed people who we felt could survive the current curriculum, because we need to present solid proof to the adult community at the end of our four years at Aifam.”

          “What that means,” Howie says. “Is that I need you to be the same person you’ve always been, Jake. Your anger and independence are what made you the perfect candidate for this project. Instead of choosing someone that I could tolerate for four years before killing them, I chose you, because I think that you could become an asset to me.”

          “And that’s what the rest of those in my faction did as well. Each of them chose scholarship candidates at the middle schools they attended who were strong-willed and unlikely to break under the mental strain this school puts on those who aren’t bred to assassination.”

          “My plan is to show the adult community that assassins will benefit more from having enforcers that they train themselves than they will from killing a person they room with for four years. Tolerating someone for a few years and killing them doesn’t really teach an assassin anything. I mean, before we even get to the high school stage of Aifam Academy’s curriculum, all of us have already been forced to tolerate normal human beings for three years. The curriculum is outdated and I think it needs to be changed.”

          “Now, the Cornell faction agrees that the curriculum is outdated and needs to be changed, but they don’t believe that assassins need enforcers. That’s where my faction and theirs differs. They believe that Aifam Academy should get rid of the current scholarship program and instead build a high school curriculum comprised of solely martial arts learning. They believe that the only thing that they need to learn in high school is how to kill even more efficiently than they were taught how to kill during elementary school.”

          “Even though I disagree with the Cornell faction, we do have the same goal in mind. Both of us want to abolish the current curriculum program that the Academy is using. So we tend to get along, because there is every possibility that our two end goals could be combined into one. That occurrence would suit me just fine, as it would actually help the people chosen to become our enforcers to become the type of fighters we need.”

          “But the Tanner faction is completely against the abolishment of the current curriculum. And that’s because the assassins that belong to it only care about killing. The only thing they want to do is bleed people dry and they don’t care whose blood it is that they spill. They are the assassins at this school who chose their scholarship student by nominating the person at their respective middle schools who they wanted to kill the most.”

          “And,” Howie says, his eyes darkening. “There’s no doubt in my mind that they will be able to make it to graduation. These people are the kind of people who are willing to wait for their chosen prey for as long as it takes. Whoever got chosen as their students will not have a chance to make it to graduation alive, because the assassins belonging to the Tanner faction will not give up their right to kill the person they nominated.”

          “What I want to do is turn you into my enforcer,” Howie says. “But I don’t know a lot about the world of enforcing, because it is radically different from the world of assassination. So I am giving you that responsibility. If you want to make it out of this school alive, Jake, you need to figure out what being an enforcer means and you need to figure out how to fill that role for me in the next four years.”

          I stare at him. I can’t fucking help it. Does Howie really not understand what a fucking enforcer is? Because what he’s asking of me is fucking impossible in a school full of assassins. “Howard,” I say to him. “How do you expect me to be your enforcer when I’m surrounded by people who are able to kill me without making any freaking effort?”

          He considers my question for a moment, then says, “I don’t know. You tell me, Jake. What do you need in order to become an enforcer for an assassin?”

          I swallow. How am I supposed to answer that fucking question? But I try for it anyway. The pain in my fingers from where he fucking hurt them still hasn’t fucking faded all the way. “I’m not entirely sure,” I admit. “But I know I’m going to have to be able to fight on par with most of you guys. And right now, I don’t have that ability.”

          “Hmm.” Howie thinks about that. He apparently reaches a fucking decision, because he says, “I can teach you how to fight.” After he says it, his eyes darken in warning and his tone drops twenty degrees **. “** But if you ever try and use the skills I teach you against me, I will make you sorry for it.”

          I shiver. I mean, I definitely want to learn to fight on fucking par with the rest of the student body (well, the assassins at least, who fucking knows if the other scholarship students have any fucking clue about fighting or not), but I ain’t about to fucking risk Howie’s wrath by making him fucking pissed off at me.

          Especially when my fingers are still fucking hurting. I mean, fuck. How long is this fucking pain in my hand going to fucking last? I look Howie straight in the eye and tell him, “I’ll swear an oath that I won’t lift a hand against you if you teach me how to fight.”

          Because I will swear that fucking oath and I will keep it until my last breath. That’s something other people don’t fucking get about me. When I make a goddamned oath, that fucking oath is sacred. I will fucking die before I break an oath I commit to fucking keeping, because my honor is all I fucking have.

          He stares at me for a long moment, then he nods. “Okay,” he says. “Swear it then.”

          I take a deep breath, because making a fucking oath is a serious fucking deal. I don’t know how other people treat this shit, but I sure as hell am not going to make light of an oath I’m giving. “Howie,” I say, using the shortened version of his name for the first time since we entered the room we’re going to share for the next four fucking years. “I swear that I will never lift a hand in violence against you, should you teach me how to fight on par with the assassins who attend this school. I will die before I break it.”

          He stares at me, like he can’t fucking believe I just swore that shit to him. “Jake,” he says. “You’re one crazy motherfucker.”

          Now it’s my turn to stare. In all the years I’ve known Howie, I’ve heard him swear maybe six times in total, and that’s including this last instance. “I’ve been called worse,” I tell him, because it’s true. I’d rather be called a crazy motherfucker than a fucking disappointment or a goddamned loser, both of which are things that my own fucking mother has called me multiple times over the last few years.

          “I’ll teach you how to fight,” Howie says. He smiles at me, and for the first fucking time since I’ve been here, it’s a normal fucking Howie smile. There’s actual warmth in his goddamned expression.

          My fear of him is starting to ebb, a little bit, but I’m not about to fucking forget that he’s able and willing to torture me if I don’t do whatever the fuck he wants. “I know a little bit about enforcing,” I say. “But I just know the basics.” And that’s true.

          But I only know what enforcing is even about because of fucking Jess. The only time that Howie ever hung out with Jess was during our Saturday visits to the park. He didn’t hang out with her any other time. And I know that for a fucking fact, because Jess and I hung out a lot and she always told me who the fuck she was spending time with.

          Hell, I hung out with Jess so fucking much that I actually know who she uses as her enforcer. All drug dealers have them and if you don’t believe me on that, then you’re a goddamned moron. Who the fuck do you think makes sure the addicts pay their dues? I can tell you for a fucking fact that it ain’t Jess. That girl can hold her own against other chicks, but she just ain’t built for fighting guys. I’ve seen her try and it ain’t fucking pretty.

          Not that girls can’t fight guys and win. I ain’t saying that shit at all, because I’ve had girls challenge me to fights back during my Wednesday fight nights. A few of them definitely wiped the fucking floor with me, but it doesn’t happen that fucking often. I think that has more to do with the fact that girls tend to stick to fighting other girls than going out and fighting guys, because there are too many fucking guys who won’t hit a chick just because she’s a chick. Luckily, I ain’t got that fucking hold-up.

          But Jess isn’t the kind of girl who can wipe the floor with a guy, partially because she just ain’t built for it, but mostly because she just ain’t got the experience with fighting that those other chicks got. She started using an enforcer to help her keep her fucking addicts in line six months after she started to fucking deal drugs, because she started having trouble collecting the fucking money she was owed.

          She hired a guy from the high school to help her. If I remember right, his name was Russ and he was a fucking sophomore at the time he became her enforcer. Fuck, Jess started dealing near the end of 5th grade, so she hired Russ somewhere between the end of 5th grade and the start of 6th –which was between my 4th grade year and 5th grade year, considering she’d already fucking skipped a grade by then.

          Anyway, I was hanging out with Jess one night and Russ walked into her house like he had every fucking right in the world to be there. And I mean, I’m a pretty fucking tough looking dude, but Russ has a few years on me and about a hundred pounds. I ain’t afraid to admit that the guy made me a little fucking nervous and I was a little fucking worried that I was going to have to protect Jess from another fucking weirdo.

          ‘Cuz when he walked into her house that night, I was pretty fucking sure that he was another one of her crazy ass addicts. I mean, she hadn’t fucking told me that she’d hired a goddamned enforcer, so I made the best fucking guess that I could.

          But Russ didn’t at like he was strung out like all the other fucking addicts that cruise in and out of her house. And yeah, her parents fucking know she’s dealing. Where the fuck do you think she gets the shit? They’re the ones that fucking provide it and she’s the one that fucking sells it. It’s a fucking family business for her.

          When the guy walked into the fucking house, I was in the goddamned kitchen making myself a sandwich. Bologna and cheese with mayo on white bread, which is the only kind of fucking sandwich I like aside from grilled cheese. And he came in the back door, which, by the way, leads to the fucking kitchen.

          So I’m standing there making myself a goddamned sandwich when this big ass motherfucker strolls into the house and doesn’t even give me a once over before he continues into the living room and starts talking to Jess like everything’s fucking fine. Now, you got to fucking understand something. I ain’t never looked like the kind of guy that people just fucking ignore and walk by, because I am built like a fucking ox. I got the look of a goddamned football quarterback, which is part of the reason my parents were always so fucking pissed that I didn’t play football.

          And when a guy dismisses me like that, it fucking throws me. So watching Russ ignore me as I stood in the kitchen making myself something to fucking eat set all kinds of fucking alarms off in my head. I figured he was strung-out on something, probably fucking coke, and he was in too much of a hurry to get his next fucking fix to have even seen me.

          That freaked me the fuck out, because Russ wasn’t a small guy. Like I said, he was bigger than me, not to mention older, and I wasn’t sure I could protect Jess from the fucker. So I ditched my half-made sandwich and followed the guy into the fucking living room.

          Jess saw me first and arched an eyebrow at me, looking pointedly at my empty hands. “I thought you were making a sandwich, Jake,” she said.

          I folded my arms over my chest. “Who the fuck is he?” I asked, ignoring the man for the time being, because I needed the fucking answer from her. For all I knew, he would tell me some cracked out lie that I had no fucking interest in hearing.

          “Oh,” Jess said, and she smiled faintly, like she was a bit embarrassed. “I forgot to tell you about Russ.” She motioned to him. “Jake, this is Russ. I hired him as my enforcer.”

          Russ turned to face me for the first time and I got my first real look at him. He looked mean, but if he was playing the part Jess said he was, then that was fucking good. Enforcers _should_ look mean. No one’s going to take an enforcer who looks like a fucking twig seriously. “Hi, Jake,” he said.

          He sized me up at the same time I sized him up and I’m pretty sure we both came to the same fucking conclusion. Namely, that he could take me in a fucking fight due to the size and height advantage, but that neither of us were really all that fucking interested in fighting we didn’t have to do.

          “Hi,” I said. I turned to Jess. “You could’ve fucking asked me to do it for you.”

          She rolled her eyes at me. “No, I couldn’t have,” she said. “You hate the fact that I’m dealing. It would interfere with your ability to work.” She nodded at Russ. “He doesn’t have that problem.”

          I grunted. She had a good fucking point. “You’re right,” I told her. “I do hate the fucking fact that you’re dealing.” I glanced at Russ. “How much does she pay you for this shit?”

          Russ glanced at her before he answered. I guess he was making sure it was okay for him to tell me or some shit. I don’t fucking know. “She cuts me in on 15% of every sale she makes.”

          Now, maybe in some other industry, 15% sounds like fucking slave’s wages, but not in the fucking drug business. A 15% cut is enough to fucking live like a millionaire. “Jess,” I said to her. “Please tell me you’re still only dealing coke and none of that other shit.”

          She shrugged at me. “I can’t tell you that and not lie to you,” she said. “My parents finally cut me in on the meth and heroin part of the business, so I’m dealing in all three now.”

          I shook my head in disgust and went back to the kitchen to finish making my fucking sandwich. No fucking wonder the guy was willing to stick around and enforce shit for her. When I finished making the sandwich, I went back to the living room and sat down beside her on the couch. “If you added all that shit to what you’re handing out,” I told her. “Then it’s a good fucking thing you hired an enforcer.”

          She looked pleased, but it made me feel a little fucking sick at my stomach. While I hadn’t ever known any drug addicts personally, I’d seen the fucking people that came around her begging for the fucking drugs. I didn’t need to fucking know them to see how bad it fucked them out. But that shit didn’t fucking faze her. The only thing she fucking wanted was the money.

          And while that was the only time I ever fucking talked to Russ, it wasn’t the only fucking time I saw the guy. I can’t even fucking remember how many times I went over to Jess’s house after she’d hired Russ and walked in on the guy enforcing the fact that an addict needed to come up with the fucking money for the drugs or _else._ And that enforcing was always fucking done with a fist. So yeah, I know the fucking basics of enforcing, but that don’t mean I fucking agree with them.

          Granted, in this case, it’s a little fucking different, since I got a feeling that the people Howie is going to want me to go all enforcer on are other assassins. And that is something I can fucking get behind, because shit. The fuckers kill people. At least I can tell myself they actually fucking deserve it, unlike the fucking drug addicts I watched Russ beat into a pulp on a nearly weekly basis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Seventeen

 

          “How do you know anything at all about enforcing?” Howie asks, pulling me out of my thoughts about Jess.

          “’Cuz of Jess,” I tell him. “She hired an enforcer a few years ago when she started selling meth and heroin, instead of just running coke. Guess she felt she needed to protect herself with that much crap on the market.” Fuck. I almost slipped with the swearing there. It is fucking _hard_ not to swear when it’s as natural to someone like me as fucking breathing.

          Howie doesn’t look surprised at my answer. “I should’ve guessed Jess would’ve hired an enforcer,” he says. “But the kind of enforcing I’m talking about is a lot more dangerous than the type of enforcing a drug enforcer does.”

          I nod. “I know,” I say. “Assassins are a lot more dangerous than drug addicts.”

          Howie doesn’t look impressed by my attempt at humor. “Yes,” he says. “We are. But Jake, you keep doing things that surprise me. I’m not used to being surprised by people, so it’s taking me some effort to accept your actions.”

          “No one knows me very well,” I tell him, because it’s the fucking truth. “Everyone thinks they do, but they don’t.” And that’s because I don’t let people get close to me. Fuck that shit. I’m not willing to let people hurt me the way my own fucking family hurt me.

          When my mother started treating me like a fucking dog when I was eight years old, I gave up all the fucking hope I ever had about finding someone who would treat me like the person I actually am. Because everyone always makes their own fucking decisions about who I am before they get to fucking know me, and I got no fucking interest in stepping into their fucking images of me. All that will do is disappoint them and piss me the fuck off.

          Fuck that shit. I’d rather be on my fucking own than deal with that bullshit. At least if I don’t fucking trust anyone, I don’t have to fucking worry about them hitting me below the goddamned belt. Figuratively speaking, of course, because if you’re not aiming below the fucking belt when you’re fighting for real, then you’re fucking doing it wrong. In a real fucking fight, you fight as dirty as you can, because if you don’t, the other fucking person will, and that’s how you fucking lose a fight.

          “Why were you willing to swear that oath to me?” Howie asks.

          “Because you’re willing to teach me how to fu—freaking fight against the other assassins in this school,” I tell him, sweat breaking out on my forehead as I realize just how fucking close I came to swearing at him again. Dammit, but this fucking rule is going to be a goddamned hard one to follow.

          Howie frowns at me. “Just because I’m willing to teach you how to fight on par with us doesn’t mean I’m going to give you leave to fight whoever you want to.”

          “I’m aware of that.” I think about what I can add to that for a second, then add, “You said you wanted me to be your enforcer. I’m betting that means that you don’t want me fighting nobody except the people you tell me you want me fighting.”

          If I’m not fucking mistaken, Howie looks relieved. It’s hard to fucking tell, though, because his expressions are so goddamned hard to read. The muscles in his face barely fucking move and if I wasn’t giving him my undivided attention, I can’t say for fucking sure that I’d be able to tell any difference at all. Suddenly the vacant expression of creepy Simon makes sense. He must be a fucking assassin, too, just one past the Aifam Academy curriculum. One of those in the adult community, as Howie fucking put it. No wonder creepy Simon seemed so fucking dull.

          “That’s it exactly,” Howie says to me. “I want you to be my enforcer, which means you answer to me and me alone. No one else can give you orders, but you better follow mine to the best of your ability.” The ‘or else’ is left unsaid, probably because I don’t fucking need it spelled out to me after that fucking demonstration that the guy is willing to fucking torture me if I don’t fucking do what he says.

          “Okay,” I tell him. “I’m game.” Honestly, I’d be game for fucking anything that has the potential to save my goddamned life in this fucking weird ass world I’ve been thrown into. If that means become an enforcer for a fucking assassin, then that’s what it fucking means.

          It’s not like my fucking honor code says shit about whether or not it’s okay to be an assassin’s enforcer, so it doesn’t break my own personal code of ethics. When it comes to fighting, I’ve only got one fucking rule for myself, and that’s not to pick on the fucking weak. And considering that all the fucking assassins in this school could wipe the fucking floor with me without even trying, none of them fall into that fucking category. So I’m home free there.

          I’m sure other people would find my decision deplorable and judge me for making it. But I don’t fucking care about that shit, because they aren’t standing in my goddamned shoes. They ain’t got no fucking idea what it’s like to look a fucking assassin in the eyes and try to find a way to fucking convince that assassins not to kill them.

          And that’s what pisses me off so goddamned much about the fucking people who are always fucking judging me. They look at what I wear or listen to the words that come out of my fucking mouth and make an instant fucking decision about me. They don’t fucking know me. What gives them the fucking right to do that shit?

          They ain’t walked in my fucking shoes or gone through the same goddamned bullshit that I’ve gone through, so they ain’t got no fucking right to look at me like I’m fucking scum on their shoes. No one has the right to do that fucking shit to anyone, but people still fucking do it, and I don’t fucking understand why.

          Yeah, okay, so I wear black clothes and I cuss a whole fucking lot, but in case you’ve missed the memo, I’m fucking angry all the goddamned time. And in case you ain’t been paying attention, I’ve got some good fucking reasons to be angry. I get so fucking sick of listening to people talk about how we should all just let go of our anger and be nice ass people to everyone we fucking meet.

          Because, fuck. The world ain’t that goddamned simple and it ain’t that goddamned nice. Sometimes anger is the only fucking thing that keeps me standing. It’s the fucking fuel that keeps my passion for living alive, because if I let go of my fucking anger, all that’s left there is hurt. And I’d much rather be angry than fucking sad all the goddamned time. I think the people who give into the hurt they feel are the real fucking losers.

          When I see people who are all “woe-is-me” it pisses me the fuck off, because when you act like that, it’s like telling the fucking world that it’s okay for them to treat you like shit. It’s giving in instead of fucking fighting back and there’s no fucking way I’m ever going to give in without a fucking fight. So I’ll hold on to my fucking anger, because it’s what keeps me going. It’s my fucking constant reminder that the world is a fucking hard ass place to live and that there ain’t nothing going to come fucking easy.

          Life ain’t fucking fair and it’s never going to fucking be fair. But I, for one, am not going to fucking fall down on my face and let the despair of it fucking consume me. Sure, it fucking sucks that life never fucking sides with me. I mean, look at the fucking mess I’ve found myself in with Howie. It’s not like I ever fucking expected that the person I went to school with for three years was a fucking assassin, but do you see me sitting down and crying my fucking eyes out because life has thrown me another fucking bad turn?

          No. You don’t. Because that ain’t the fucking kind of person I am. Does it fucking suck that I ended up in a school like this, surrounded by assassins that can kill me without fucking thinking about it? Yeah, it does. It really fucking sucks. But it isn’t the fucking end of the world, because I still have a fucking chance. Even if Howie wasn’t doing this weird shit with the factions that I don’t really fucking understand, I’d still have a fucking chance, because I’d fucking fight for one.

          And that’s the difference between me and those fucking sad ass people who sit down and just let life walk all over them. I let life throw whatever the fuck it wants at me and then I use all my fucking strength to fight my way out of the fucking shithole it throws me in. Because I’ll be fucking damned if I sit here and let the fucking world break me. If my own fucking parents couldn’t do it after six fucking years of neglect and emotional abuse, then I’m not going to fucking let anyone else have that goddamned power over me either.

          Because in the end, that’s what it all fucking comes down to. You either have the fucking power and the strength of will to stand up and fight for your own fucking life or you don’t. It’s that fucking simple. Life isn’t nice, it isn’t fucking easy, and those people who fucking expect it to be either are fucking stupid ass people who have deluded themselves into the fucking idea that life is meant to be fair.

          And even with all this fucking shit that’s going on around me right now, I can say this shit for myself: At the end of the fucking day, I’m still fighting for my right to fucking live my life. And I will never fucking give up on that battle, because the day I fucking give up is the day someone or something will fucking kill me. Because as soon as I lose the fucking will to live, the world will take my life from me as easily and as gleefully as any of the fucking assassins in this goddamned school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eighteen

 

          Howie doesn’t say anything. I guess he’s still fucking chewing on the fact that I’m not in raging hysterics after everything that has happened today. But the truth is, I ain’t got the fucking energy for that. I’m too fucking drained. It doesn’t help that I am still feeling ridiculous amounts of fear that he is going to decide to torture me on a goddamn whim.

          “You’re willing to be an enforcer for me, just like that?” he asks.

          I roll my eyes at him, but I answer. “Yes,” I say. Why the fuck doesn’t he understand that I am willing to do whatever it fucking takes to stay alive?

          “Why?”

          “Because it’s the only way I can think of to keep you from killing me,” I tell him. “And because you’re still the only person at this school that I even halfway know.”

          “So you’re willing to help me because you know me?” Howie asks, like he’s not really sure how to take what I’m saying.

          I groan. “Listen, Howie. I know that all the stuff I’m telling you doesn’t make sense to you because it’s not stuff that you’d ever be willing to do, but we aren’t the same freaking person. First of all, you’re an assassin, which means you are a lot more capable than me when it comes to pretty much all things physical. And secondly, you know more about this school than I can ever hope to learn on my own. It’s just self-preservation.”

          “Does that mean it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you know me at all?”

          I don’t fucking know what to say to him. He keeps asking me the same fucking questions over and over again in a million fucking ways. I mean, he’s an assassin for fuck’s sake. Is he really this fucking unsure of himself? “If I didn’t know you,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t be in this mess. So yeah. It does have a little something to do with the fact that I freaking know you.”

          “Jake,” he says, after a long moment of silence. “I know I never told you this when we were at Twindale. And you probably won’t believe me now, considering everything you’ve been through in the last few hours. But I think it’s important that you hear it.”

          I stare at him, waiting for him to continue. It wasn’t a fucking question, so I’m pretty sure I don’t need to respond, but I’m starting to doubt that as more and more time passes. “What’s that?” I ask, keeping my voice soft. Whatever the fuck it is he’s trying to tell me, it’s obviously fucking hard for him to say it.

          He smiles at me, and this time, the smile he’s wearing is self-depreciating. “The truth is, I didn’t want to bring you to this school, Jake.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. He looks worn out. “But no matter what I tried, I couldn’t find a way around it.”

          I frown at him. “Why didn’t you want to bring me here?” I ask him. “I thought you said I was the perfect candidate for your new enforcer curriculum thing.”

          He sighs. “You are,” he says. “But I didn’t want to subject you to this school for one very simple reason.” This time when he pauses, I wait him out. “That reason,” he says. “Even though you probably won’t believe me when I say it, is that I consider you my best friend.”

          I stare at him. Now I really don’t know what the fuck to say, because hell. What do you say to the person who is willing to fucking torture you in order to make a goddamn point when they tell you that they consider you their best fucking friend? I mean, I don’t know if I fucking believe him or not. I don’t really know how the fuck to describe what I’m feeling, except as incredibly fucking confused. Because his actions and the words just don’t fucking go together.

          “See?” he says, and there’s a tinge of sadness in his voice. “You don’t believe me.”

          “I don’t know what I believe,” I tell him. And I’m being fucking honest with him right now, because a) I can’t fucking lie to save my own goddamned life. It’s just not in my fucking skill set. And b) I really don’t fucking know what to believe.

          “I know that it seems far-fetched to you,” he continues. “But you have to understand that I was taught from the time I was five years old that I wasn’t supposed to have emotions.” He looks irritated, but I can tell it takes him some serious fucking effort to put the expression on his fucking face. But at least I can tell from the fucking words he’s saying that the person he is irritated with isn’t me. Which is a fucking relief, because I ain’t got no fucking desire to be tortured. The tiny taste of it he gave me earlier was more than fucking enough to last me a goddamn lifetime.

          “I never talked to you about my parents or my life before,” he says. “Because without knowing this.” He motions around the room, indicating everything associated with the school, including the fact that he’s a fucking assassin. “There’s no way that you would’ve been able to understand the types of problems and frustrations I was dealing with at home.”

          He sighs. “There were so many times that I just wanted to come clean with you and tell you everything, but I couldn’t make myself do it. Because I was afraid if I told you about all of this it would make you hate me. And I wanted to hold on to the only friend I’d ever made.” He smiles sadly. “I’m pretty sure I’ve burned that bridge myself at this point, but I just wanted you to know.”

          I clear my throat and make myself speak. Because how many fucking times in my life have I wished that someone understand the shit I was going through? I get what he’s going through, because fuck. He might be an assassin, but I guess the rest of the people around him forgot that he’s just a fucking kid like me. He’s still figuring this shit out as much as I am.

          “You haven’t burned any bridges with me,” I tell him. “Because you never made me aware of the fact you wanted me to be your friend at all. You just told me to stay out of your business and hung out with me all the time. You gave me mixed signals from the first day we met, Howie. I never knew how to take you, so I took you at face value. That’s why, when you told me not to expect anything from you, I took that at face value, too.”

          He stares at me. “So,” he says, and the words come out slowly, like he’s having to think about them as he’s talking. “Are you saying that I didn’t ruin our friendship by bringing you to this school because I kept you too much in the dark about my life?”

          I shrug. “Pretty much,” I say.

          His eyes widen in disbelief or hope. I’m not really sure which, considering how fucking hard his expressions are to read. “So that’s why you don’t feel betrayed like all the other scholarship students here?”

          I roll my eyes. “You can put it that way if you want to, but it ain’t really like that.”

          “Will you explain it to me, then?”

          And now he’s acting like the Howie I’ve known for the past three years. It makes me relax a little, even with the threat of torture hanging over my fucking head, because I can relate to this Howie. I _know_ this Howie. “Sure,” I say. “It’s pretty simple. See, the thing is, you’re trying to put me in the same box as the rest of the scholarship students that came to this school.”

          “What do you mean?”

          “Well, all of them feel betrayed by the person who brought them here. I’m guessing that’s because the other scholarship students trusted the assassin who set them up. I know the ones I roomed with last night felt like they had lost their best friends when they found out about the freaking set-up.”

          “Are you saying you didn’t trust me?”

          I snort. “Howie, I ain’t never trusted a single freaking person in my life except myself. I learned a long freaking time ago that the only reason people ever approach me is because they want something from me. And that suits me just fine, as long as I can get something in freaking return. I never thought once that you considered me your best friend or a friend at all, because you told me to stay out of your freaking business. So I did. Heck, I even swore to you I’d stay out of your business. Guess you don’t want me staying out of it now, though.”

          “No,” Howie says. “You’re right, I don’t want you staying out of it anymore. Because now I need your help. Not only so that I can do something to change the way things work at this school, but also because I don’t want to be forced to kill you the month before graduation.”

          “Well,” I say. “We got four months to figure all this crap out. And I already swore an oath to you. Teach me to fight, I’ll enforce for you. Easy enough.”

          Howie snorts. “That is nowhere near as easy as you make it sound. How in the world are you managing to cope with all of this?” He looks at me, then sighs. “If the positions were reversed, I’m pretty sure I’d feel betrayed. I know I wouldn’t want to continue being friends with someone who set me up to get killed.”

          I roll my eyes. “Howie, I ain’t you. Ain’t you figured that freaking crap out by now?” At his startled look, I add, “I ain’t got no problem with still being your friend. Or starting being your friend. Whatever the heck you want to call it is fine by me. ‘Cuz as far as I’m concerned, this is the first freaking day I’ve known you for who and what you are. And considering you’ve been keeping this crap a secret for three freaking years, I figure you probably need someone to talk to about as badly as I do.”

          He stares at me. “Jake,” he says. “You are incredible.”

          The praise makes me uncomfortable, because praise always fucking does. I’m a lot more used to being called a good for nothing loser than fucking anything else, so the fact that Howie can stand there and tell me he thinks I’m incredible is really fucking hard to take. “You’re not so bad yourself,” I say back.

          Howie glances at my hand, the one he hurt earlier, and winces. “I’m sorry I hurt you like that, Jake,” he says. “But I need you to understand exactly what it is I’m capable of.”

          I nod at him. The fear I’ve been feeling all day has ebbed to a manageable throb in the back of my head and I can pretty much fucking ignore it. It’s sitting in the same goddamned place that the hurt that I feel because of my fucking family sits, and I put that shit out of my mind all the fucking time. If I can do that with pain, then I sure as shit can do it with fear.

          “I get it,” I say. “You need me to understand that you are willing and able to freaking torture me at will. Or anyone else you feel needs to be tortured. I didn’t need the demonstration, ‘cuz, like I said earlier, I always take you at face value. I ain’t got no reason to think that you’d lie to me.”

          He raises an eyebrow at me and I can read the amusement in his eyes. “I’ve been lying to you for the last three years,” he points out.

          I shrug. “Not really,” I say. At his confused look, I continue. “See, I never asked you if you were hiding anything from me. I never tried to get in your freaking business. And I sure as heck never asked you if you were an assassin plotting a way to get me into a weird freaking school meant to house assassins during their high school years. So no, you never actually lied to me. Be kinda freaking dumb of me if I got mad at you for something like that.”

          Howie shakes his head at me. “You’re very strange, Jake.”

          I give him a crooked grin and rest my head against the wall behind me. “Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

          A few minutes pass before he speaks again. “There were so many times I wanted to come clean with you,” he says. “Do you remember that night when you tried to come to my defense?”

          I snort. “Yes,” I tell him. I can’t fucking forget it. “That was the night you told me never to get involved in your business again. We didn’t speak to each other for weeks after that.”

          He laughs. “Yeah,” he says. “I thought I’d pissed you off for good and that you had decided I wasn’t worth being friends with, after all. It actually surprised me when you started waiting for me to get out of class. It wasn’t until after you waited for me every day for a week that I realized that you were trying to apologize to me, but didn’t know how.”

          I smile at the memory. “I’ve never been all that great with apologizing to people when I’ve actually done something wrong. When you started speaking to me again, it was a pretty freaking big weight off my shoulders, ‘cuz I hated going that long without saying anything at all to you. You were the only person I could rant to and not feel like I was bothering.”

          Howie smiles. “We’re pretty messed up,” he says.

          “Yep,” I agree. “We are.”

          “Anyway,” he says, breaking the silence that fell after my last comment. “That night when you tried to defend me, the two people who were messing with me weren’t people you could have handled.”

          “Let me guess,” I say, droll. “They were assassins, too.”

          He blinks, startled. “No,” he says, then laughs a little. “Though I can see why you might think that, after everything that’s gone on today.”

          “Then why wouldn’t I have been able to handle them?”

          “Because while those two definitely aren’t assassins, they are incredibly dangerous.”

          “How so?” I ask, brow furrowing in confusion. If they weren’t fucking assassins, then I sure as shit could have handled them.

          “There are a lot of different players in the underground world,” Howie says. “Assassins are just one part of it. The people that were messing with me that night were Interrogators.”

          Interrogators?  A chill runs down my spine. “You mean they were torture experts?” I ask him.

          Howie nods. “The reason they came to me that night is a pretty simple one. Before an assassin can attend Aifam Academy as part of the high school curriculum, they have to learn how to torture someone. I didn’t want to go with them and was telling them that much when you walked up. Needless to say, they weren’t very happy with me, and it took all of my skill to keep them from deciding to make you the person I had to torture that night.”

          I draw in a sharp breath. Fuck. It had occurred to me earlier that those two guys might’ve been assassins, but I’d never fucking dreamed that there were torture expects out there. Or that Howie had been forced to learn to torture people before even graduating from middle school. “Thanks,” I say, and it’s sincere, because fuck. I don’t even want to think about what being tortured back then would’ve been like.

          He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and I’m starting to understand that his smile will almost fucking never reach his eyes. He’s been through a whole lot of fucking shit that I will probably never fucking understand, just because he had the bad luck to be born into a fucking family of assassins. “I had to pick one of the other students at our school to torture,” he tells me. “It was the only way the two of them would let you off the hook.”

          My eyes go wide as I remember that a student transferred during the middle of my seventh grade year. “You mean Eric Lane?”

          Howie nods. “I wasn’t happy about having to choose a classmate, but I made the best out of a bad situation.”

          “I get it,” I say, and I do. Because sometimes in life, that’s all you really can do. Making the best out of a bad situation is the only fucking way to get through life, because life will always throw bad situations out at you just to see if you can fucking handle them. “That had to be freaking rough, though,” I add. “You and Eric hung out a lot. More than me and you, actually. I kinda thought he was your best friend.”

          Howie smiles sadly. “No,” he says. “Eric was just an easy mark. He was popular, which helped me gain access to the rest of that crowd, but the two of us were never really friends. But he was a decent person.” His hands clench into fists at his sides. “And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for what I put him through.” He looks at me. “But according to the way my world works, I don’t have to forgive myself. I just have to kill and torture the people I’m told to kill and torture as well as the people who cross me.”

          I shiver. “I ain’t got no plans to cross you, Howie,” I tell him. “I already promised to be your enforcer. I get that being your enforcer comes before being your friend, and I ain’t got no qualms about that. Just tell me what you want me to do and consider it done.”

          Howie smiles. “Very well,” he says. “Here’s the first thing I want you to do.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 19 through 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a part of chapter 21 is here, just as a note. xD

Chapter Nineteen

 

It takes Howie until midnight to go over his plan with me and by the time he finally stops fucking talking, it’s all I can do to keep my goddamned eyes open. I’m not sure I can even keep all the details of his fucking plan straight, because half the shit he’s said to me hasn’t made any fucking sense.

Mostly all he’s done is give me a complete run-down of all the shit he plans to do by the end of our senior year. Granted, it’s still fucking four years off, but that shit don’t feel like it’s that far when I got my fucking  _life_  hanging in the goddamned balance.

So I do the best I fucking can to memorize all the shit he’s told me over the last few hours, ‘cuz I remember him fucking telling me that he’s going to quiz me at the end of it and that if I can’t fucking tell him what he’s said to me, it will lead to fucking torture.

And to tell you the fucking truth, I ain’t got no fucking clue how I’m supposed to be taking this shit about me being his best friend for the last three years. ‘Cuz fuck. I don’t really know shit about being friends with other fucking people, ‘cuz I try to stay the fuck out of other people’s shit, but I’m pretty fucking sure best friends aren’t supposed to throw you into situations this fucking messed up.

But hell, what do I know? Maybe this kind of bullshit is fucking normal. I mean, don’t get me fucking wrong here, because I know this fucking school isn’t normal in any fucking sense of the goddamned word. But maybe it’s normal for friends to throw you into fucking ridiculous ass situations that seem fucking hopeless. I’m guessing that probably isn’t the fucking case, but I ain’t got no goddamned proof to the contrary, so I guess it don’t really fucking matter.

It takes me a few minutes to realize that Howie isn’t fucking talking anymore, ‘cuz I’ve gotten so goddamned used to the sound of his voice that I swear I can hear it fucking ringing in my ears. But I do finally realize it and I look at him, my eyes red with exhaustion. “That’s a lot of crap to freaking remember,” I say.

He nods. “I’m aware of that. But I also know that you are capable of holding a lot of information in your mind at once. So if you were paying attention, then there’s no doubt in my mind that you remember everything I’ve said.”

I half-heartedly glare at him, because while it might irritate the shit out of me, he’s got a fucking point. I never really tried in the fucking classes I had to take during middle school, because I didn’t fucking care about the shit they were teaching. It didn’t fucking matter that I never picked up a book to study, though, because I remembered every fucking thing a teacher ever fucking said. I ain’t really convinced that it’s a skill worth fucking mentioning, but it certainly fucking helped me pass those goddamned End of Grade tests.

“Your memory is exceptional,” Howie says. “I don’t know anyone else who can remember everything they’ve ever heard someone say.” _(Note to self: check for discrepancies with this when revision time comes around)_

“It ain’t like I do it on purpose,” I tell him. “And I don’t know why I can do it in the first freaking place. It just sorta happens.”

“I imagine,” he says, and the words come out in a drawl. “That anytime you are put under duress that the skill becomes more accessible. Tell me, Jake. Do you remember everything I’ve said to you in the last six hours?”

I nod. “Yeah,” I say. “I remember every freaking word.” And I really fucking do. He could choose any fucking sentence he’s said to me at random and I’d be able to fucking quote it back to him. And he’s probably fucking right about the skill becoming more accessible the more duress I’m under, because I’m pretty fucking sure if I wasn’t fucking terrified of him deciding to torture me that I wouldn’t remember a goddamned thing he’s said to me.

Because I am fucking  _exhausted._  In the space of fourteen fucking hours, I’ve gone from thinking that Aifam Academy was a chance for me to fucking make something of myself to trying to figure out how the fuck I’m going to stay alive for the next four years. And to top it all off, a guy I thought I knew pretty fucking well, considering I spent the last three goddamned years hanging out with him, has turned out to be a fucking assassin. I mean, who the fuck wouldn’t be shell-shocked to learn something like that in the space of a single fucking day?

Hell, I’m sure there are other fucking students here who are still in fucking shock. Fuck, I’m not even sure that  _I’m_  not still in shock. I feel like my life has turned into a goddamned B-rated nightmare and I’m fucking waiting for the moment someone pinches me into real life. I’d say that qualifies for shock, but what the fuck do I know about that shit? Right now, I’d just settle for some goddamned sleep.

To my surprise and relief, he doesn’t fucking quiz me. “Get some sleep,” he says. “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day for both of us.”

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty

 

I don’t know how I managed to fucking sleep, considering I have to share a goddamned room with Howie, but I fucking managed it. And I know I did, because I’m trying to fight the goddamned glare from the sun right now as it streams in the fucking window.

I glance at the clock sitting on the table beside my bed and try to burrow back under my covers. Fuck me. It’s only fucking 5am. There’s no goddamned way I’m getting out of bed this fucking early. Especially seeing as how I didn’t get to go to sleep until fucking 2 am last night. And maybe there are some fucking people out there who can handle only sleeping for three hours at a fucking time, but I ain’t fucking one of them.

Goddamn it. I try to go back to sleep, but as usual, I ain’t got no fucking luck, and I give up after about fifteen minutes. Howie’s obviously not having the same fucking problem, because he’s sound asleep in his own bed. Part of me wonders if he’s as alert as he should be, considering he’s an assassin and all, but I push down the impulse to go find out. I ain’t fucking stupid.

If I wake Howie up at 5:15 in the fucking morning, I got a feeling that the shit that he did to me last night will feel like fucking sunshine and rainbows. The memory of it makes me wince and I massage the fingers that Howie fucking vice-gripped last night.

And, in case you’re thinking that there’s no possible way that someone can fucking squeeze someone’s fingers so hard that it could count as fucking torture, you’re wrong. ‘Cuz I can tell by the way my fingers are fucking aching that they are bruised all the way down to the goddamned bone. Which pisses me off, ‘cuz it means I ain’t going to be able to use them for shit until they heal a little bit, but it also reminds me of the fucking fact that Howie’s got no fucking qualms about torturing me if it suits his fucking purpose.

The room I’m sharing with Howie isn’t all that fucking big and there’s not a whole lot in it. Just two beds, two nightstands, two wall closets on either side of the room, and computer desks. I ain’t got nothing fucking better to do, so I switch on the laptop that’s sitting on top of the desk on my side of the room.

I’m not really all that into computers, but it’s fucking better than sitting on my bed and waiting for eight-‘o’-clock to roll around, which is when Howie told me we had to get up today. According to what he said last night, we have to take breakfast in the cafeteria at 8:30 and our classes start at 9:30. Yeah. Even though all the shit that’s going on around here is fucking crazy, Aifam Academy is still a fucking school.

Howie didn’t tell me a whole fucking lot about the way the classes work last night, because he was more fucking concerned about spelling out every fucking thing he could think of concerning the North faction. I ain’t got no fucking interest in repeating all that shit, ‘lest Howie fucking forces me to, but the gist of it is that he needs me to get the non-allied assassins to join his fucking team.

That’s probably not the fucking way that he would put it—hell, that’s not the fucking way he put it—but that’s exactly what he wants me to do, so who fucking cares if I say it my way or his way? I guess his way sounds nicer and more fucking elegant or some shit, but fuck. I ain’t never said that I was fucking nice.

So basically what he wants me to fucking do is find out which assassins belong to what factions, ‘cuz the only assassins whose faction he knows are the ones in his own fucking faction and the few major ones associated with the Tanner and Cornell factions. I guess the ones who ain’t fucking upfront about the faction they’re siding with don’t want it be fucking well-known or some shit, and somehow Howie expects me to find that shit out.

I think he’s a little fucking crazy for expecting me to be able to find that kind of shit out though, considering I ain’t got no fucking clue what to look for. I mean, he gave me the fucking basics of what the Tanner and Cornell factions want, but that doesn’t fucking tell me what the leaders of the factions are like.

‘Cuz the truth of the matter is, while I may not have had many—or any—fucking friends in middle school, I watched enough fucking groups of people to get a pretty good understanding of the way they fucking work. And people are always fucking drawn to the ones who have temperaments like theirs. That’s why Howie could fucking fit in everywhere, ‘cuz he fucking adjusted his own goddamned temperament in order to blend with the crowd.

I don’t really understand why he can’t do this shit himself, considering he’s got a deeper understanding of the way these people fucking work than I ever will, but when I brought that point up last night, he just told me it was because he’s one of the fucking leaders. He said that being a leader of one of the factions meant that he couldn’t approach non-allied assassins without them thinking that he was trying to fucking recruit them to his side.

Granted, if he was trying to talk to the non-allied people, then he probably fucking was trying to recruit them. That’s what leaders of causes fucking do. And I guess Howie’s fucking cause is my cause too, now, because if I don’t fucking step up and do what the fuck he wants me to do, I’m pretty fucking sure that I’m going to end up fucking dead.

Now, there’s no fucking guarantee that I won’t end up dead anyway, ‘cuz I’m a goddamned sitting duck in this school, considering how many fucking assassins are housed here. And there’s no fucking guarantee that Howie won’t be the one to end my life in four years, but I can at least fucking do what it takes to keep him from torturing me. ‘Cuz after experiencing his so-called demonstration last night, I got no fucking plans on giving him any fucking reason to do anything worse to me.

The laptop finally boots up—fuck, it’s so goddamned slow I want to scream!—and I see that it doesn’t have a whole fucking lot on it. It has a Windows 7 operating system, so it’s obviously past its prime, but at least it’s going to give me something to fucking do besides sit in the goddamned dark listening to Howie breathe.

I click on the start menu and find the internet browser. I know Howie said there was no fucking internet connection last night, but fuck—the guy’s lied to me for the last three years. I ain’t trusting nothing he fucking says without solid proof of my own. I open Google Chrome and it loads the fucking ‘webpage unavailable, please try again later’ message. Well, whatever. At least I got proof that Howie told me the fucking truth about that.

Besides, it’s not like I had any fucking plan to use the internet as a way to get ‘rescued.’ Maybe another one of the scholarship students is thinking of trying to use it that way, but I just wanted to check my fucking email. Mostly out of habit and a desire to do something familiar more than any fucking thing else.

Even if I could access the internet, what would I fucking say in an email or a facebook post? “My new school is full of assassins. Please send help.” Yeah, pretty sure that wouldn’t fucking fly. People would just think I was fucking cracked. And I can’t say that I’d blame them, because it’s not that this kind of shit is fucking commonplace.

I mean, if I saw a post like that, and I wasn’t in this fucking predicament myself, I’d roll my fucking eyes and tell the person who posted the comment to go get fucking help. I mean, really. No one is going to fucking believe that shit. Hell, I’m in the fucking middle of it, and I barely fucking believe it. I guess there’s a fucking reason that people say that truth is stranger than fiction, but I never thought I was going to experience that shit first-hand.

But whatever. The internet doesn’t work. Test successful. Or failed. Doesn’t really fucking matter how you want to put it, because the internet doesn’t fucking work and a turn of phrase ain’t going to fucking change that.

I dig through the other applications on this fucking laptop and find a plethora of mostly useless shit. Microsoft Office is on it, of course, because all fucking computers come with that shit anymore. I’m guessing if this school really does operate like a goddamned school, that I’ll be using that shit for my fucking assignments.

There are no documents saved on it and only the basic wallpapers that computers are bought containing. That’s the only thing that really pisses me off about not having the fucking internet. At least if I could get on the fucking net, I’d be able to get a goddamned decent desktop background instead of the shitty one it comes with.

And it has only the fucking standard games, too, which is even more obnoxious. ‘Cuz it means I got to choose between fucking Minesweeper, which I cannot fucking stand, because I always fucking lose, and Solitaire, which I ain’t too fucking fond of, because it’s so goddamned boring. Of course, there are three other games—FreeCell, Spider Solitaire, and Hearts—but I have even less interest in those fucking games than the first two.

Mostly ‘cuz I got no fucking clue how to play the last three. I don’t even fucking know what FreeCell is and Spider Solitaire just sounds fucking dumb. My issue with Hearts is two-fold. First of all, I don’t fucking know how to play it. And secondly, it’s called fucking “Hearts.” I ain’t got no interest in playing a game with such a girly fucking name.

So I only really have three fucking choices. I can play Minesweeper or Solitaire or I can go try to fall asleep again. Fuck. I know myself well enough to know the last option isn’t a fucking option at all, so I pull up Solitaire. I’m bored anyway, so it’s not like the game can make it any fucking worse. And if I try to play Minesweeper with Howie sleeping less than twenty fucking feet away from me, it’s a definite possibility that I will wake him the fuck up, because I get fucking pissed when I try to play that fucking game.

I lose count of the fucking number of games I play before I hear Howie’s alarm go off, and I close the game with a fucking sigh of relief. I may not be able to stand sitting in the fucking dark by myself, but playing Solitaire for fucking three hours isn’t exactly my idea of a good fucking time.

Howie is up by the time his alarm stops beeping and before I know it, he is standing behind me. “What are you doing, Jake?” he asks, and there’s an edge to his voice that I don’t like.

“I was playing Solitaire,” I tell him. I don’t like the way he sounds right now, because he sounds like he’s willing and able to fucking kill me without a second thought. And, I mean, I know that he is able and willing to kill me that way all the time anyway, but he doesn’t usually fucking sound like he wants to. Right now, he kinda does, and I got to admit, it is freaking me the fuck out.

“Why are you on the computer at all?” he asks, and the tone is still in his fucking voice.

“I couldn’t freaking sleep,” I say. “I woke up three freaking hours ago and I didn’t want to sit in the dark waiting for you to wake up.”

“Do you always have trouble sleeping?” he asks, and I breathe a fucking silent sight of relief, because he sounds _normal_ again.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve had trouble sleeping for years.” And I have. Considering I’ve had to be my own alarm clock for six fucking years now, it’s not really that goddamned surprising that I have trouble sleeping. Factor in all the shit I’ve had to deal with and all the stress it fucking causes, and you got the perfect fucking recipe for insomnia. I hesitate a little, but then I make myself ask the fucking question. “Do you not want me to use the computer or something?”

Howie has moved away from me at this point and he’s working on getting dressed when I ask the question. He turns to look at me and shakes his head. “I don’t have a problem with you using the computer as long as you aren’t using it to try to plan an escape or to try and access the internet.”

I grimace, but I’m honest, because I am always honest unless I have a really good fucking reason not to be. “I ain’t going to lie to you, Howie,” I say. “I tried to get on the internet when I first got on the computer.”

He arches an eyebrow at me and asks, “Why?” and I have to fight a fucking flinch because that tone is back in his voice.

“Habit more than anything else,” I tell him. “I’m used to checking my freaking email as soon as I wake up.” I force myself to be completely honest with him, even though I fucking hate myself for it. “And I wanted to see for myself if you were lying or not.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “I guess I shouldn’t expect anything else from you, Jake. You did just find out that I’ve been lying to you for the past three years.” When he says all that, his voice is the one I think of as being his real voice, even though it’s the fake one he’s used for the last three fucking years. But the next words that come out of his mouth come out in that same fucking hard tone he’s been using—the one that scares the fucking shit out of me. “What would you have done if the internet was working?” he asks.

“I would’ve checked my email,” I tell him. “And then I would’ve downloaded a better freaking desktop background, because the standard ones that come on this things are freaking horrible.”

“If you could email your parents, what would you tell them?” Howie asks, and it’s _still_ the same hard tone.

I get why he doesn’t fucking trust me, because I mean, I’m essentially his fucking prisoner. But he honestly doesn’t need to fucking doubt me, because I got no fucking plan to run. Hell, even if I thought I _could_ escape and escape with my life, I wouldn’t fucking leave. Even with all the crazy shit going on around me, this is the first time in my life I’ve ever felt like I had a fucking purpose.

“I know that you think I’d try and get someone to come rescue me or some crap like that,” I say to him. “But I ain’t got no freaking plans like that. Despite the freaking insane nature of this school, it’s still a freaking step up from dealing with my stupid freaking parents all the time. At least you see me as someone who has some freaking worth, even though I don’t really understand why.”

Howie stares at me. “You don’t want to run?” he asks, and at goddamned _last_ he’s dropped that fucking tone. Now it’s back to old Howie. I guess that’s a better fucking way to put it. Old Howie is the Howie I know. I’m sure that Old Howie is still a fucking part of this new Howie, but I have to figure out how the fuck the two go together to make one person.

“No,” I tell him. “I don’t want to freaking run.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-One

 

Howie finishes getting dressed and takes a seat on the foot of his bed. “I don’t understand why you are able to take everything that is going on without completely freaking out about it,” he says. “I’ve been getting frantic text messages from my faction members since I woke up.”

I stare at him. “You only woke up ten freaking minutes ago.”

“I know.”

“I thought you said there was no freaking cell service here,” I say, but I feel kinda like I’ve forgotten something I shouldn’t have. That’s not a good fucking feeling to have when you got an assassin’s attention focused on you.

Howie shakes his head slowly. “I thought you said you remembered everything I said to you last night, Jake,” he says, and there is a serious undercurrent of threat in his voice.

I flinch, because I can’t fucking help it. “I remember everything you said to me last night after you did this,” I tell him, holding up my fingers. “But beforehand, I may not have registered everything you said, ‘cuz I was still in shock over the freaking orientation speech that lady gave.”

He stares at my fingers, like he’s weighing whether or not he wants to do them some more fucking damage, and it’s all I can fucking do to keep my seat. That look fucking terrifies me, because it’s so fucking clinical. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time,” he says. “But if anything happens today that makes me doubt your word about remembering everything I told you last night, I will do much worse than bruise your fingers a little.”

“I understand,” I say, because what other fucking choice do I have? I think about telling him that he doesn’t have to fucking worry, because I remember every goddamned thing he said to me last night, but I hold my fucking tongue. ‘Cuz I figure as soon as I fucking say that shit, he’ll manage to find _something_ that I don’t remember to the last fucking word, and I ain’t got no fucking intention to give him that kind of fuel to use against me.

“Good,” he says. “As for the cell service, I have access to it. There are scramblers that prevent anyone without it from reaching an outside line.”

“Oh.” I frown. “Wait a sec. Does that mean that I can use my phone to text you since our phones are both here?” I don’t fucking know anything about phones or how they work, so it seems like a pretty fucking logical question to me.

Howie shakes his head no. “The way I put it isn’t technically correct,” he says. “I’m not really much of a technical person, but the way I understand it is that there is a special code that allows me and the other assassins to bypass the scramblers and access the closest cell tower.”

“I still don’t really get it,” I say, because it’s the fucking truth. I ain’t got no fucking clue how phones work regularly, let alone what codes and scramblers and shit got to do with anything. “But what I’m getting is that just you and the assassins can use cells and that me and the other scholarship students can’t.”

“Yeah,” Howie says. “That’s really all you need to know.” He glances at the clock. “C’mon. We’ve only got a few minutes before breakfast starts.”

I glance down at myself and realize that I’ve still got last night’s fucking clothes on. “Can I change real quick?” I ask, ‘cuz I got the feeling if I don’t ask, it’ll piss Howie off. And I ain’t got no fucking interest in pissing him off.

“You’ve been up for three hours and you still haven’t changed out of last night’s clothes?” he asks, arching an eyebrow at me.

“Nope.”

He rolls his eyes. “Typical, Jake. But yeah, go ahead and get changed. I can’t have my potential enforcer walking around the school in the clothes he slept in.”

I can tell he’s irritated as fuck and my hands shake a little as I change as fast as fucking possible, ‘cuz I sure as fuck don’t want to make him anymore irritated than he already is. “Sorry,” I say, the apology muffled by the shirt I’m pulling over my head.

“I don’t want your apologies,” Howie says. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

The irritation in his voice has died down though, so I guess the apology actually did make a fucking difference, despite the discrepancy in his words. “I won’t,” I say. Knowing that Howie can still be appeased with a fucking apology eases the shaking in my hands a little bit, but not by much. I still don’t fucking know when I’m going to walk over the line and end up being fucking tortured.

I mean, I ain’t going to fucking _try_ to walk over the line, but Howie hasn’t exactly drawn it in the fucking sand. It’s not one of those crystal clear lines, by any fucking means, so there’s no fucking tell when I will accidentally fumble my way across it. But I got a feeling it will fucking happening, because my luck has always been fucking horrible.

“Let’s go,” he says, after I’m dressed, and I follow him down the hall to the cafeteria for my first communal meal at this crazy fucking school.

My first impression of the cafeteria is that it is the biggest fucking lunchroom I’ve ever fucking seen in my entire goddamned life. It is easily the size of eight football fields and I’m pretty fucking sure even a baseball stadium is smaller than this fucking lunchroom.

There are a whole fuck ton of tables in the cafeteria and they are obviously custom made. I say obviously, because each one stretches the entire fucking length of the room, minus about twenty feet at each end, and I’m pretty fucking sure that you can’t buy them pre-made at that fucking size.

The tables are made from a dark wood and they look pretty fucking sleek, which is probably good, ‘cuz they ain’t got no fucking tablecloths on them. Of course, I ain’t never seen a school lunchroom that puts tablecloths on tables, but I guess I was expecting something a little fucking fancier at a rich ass school like Aifam.

Granted, the tables are pretty fucking fancy, even being wood, so I ain’t really complaining. Not that I’d complain anyway, considering the fucking circumstances, but I got to admit that being trapped here feels a lot less stifling knowing that I have access to things that I couldn’t have ever fucking imagined before. I’m starting to fucking see why there are people out there who will do fucking anything for money, because fucking hell. Luxury is goddamned nice.

But the size of the room and the tables inside of it are only momentary surprises, ‘cuz the next thing that I fucking notice is that the room is _quiet._ There’s at least a hundred fucking people in the cafeteria and none of them are fucking talking.

I ain’t gonna lie; it’s a little fucking intimidating to walk into a room this fucking size and hear _silence._ I mean, I get that the other scholarship students are still fucking processing all the shit that has just fucking happened, but shit. Not even the assassins are talking, and I mean, I can’t tell if that shit’s normal or not, but it just adds to the rest of the silence.

But fuck. Howie gave me instructions for today, starting with fucking breakfast, and I ain’t intended to give him any fucking reason to torture me. Not after I came so close to pissing him off already. It takes me a couple of minutes to pick her face out of the crowd, because the room is so fucking big and there are so many goddamn unfamiliar faces, but I finally find her.

Talon’s sitting with the assassin that she accused of betraying her yesterday—I’m pretty fucking sure his name was Gabriel—and luckily, they’re sitting on this end of the fucking cafeteria. Granted, pretty much everyone is seated on this fucking half of the room, because it’s way too fucking big to try and walk all the way to the other end.

There are buffet stations all around the room at pretty even intervals, and it makes my mind boggle because fuck—every single one of the stations is on and steaming as far as I can tell, and that’s a goddamned lot of food. I fucking hope it is all food that takes forever to fucking perish, because that’s just fucking ridiculous.

I force myself to stop thinking about shit that doesn’t fucking matter and make my way over to were Talon is sitting. Without letting myself think too much about it, I take the seat next to her. “Morning,” I say.

And, like fucking magic or some shit, when I say that one fucking word, the cafeteria silence shatters and people start fucking talking to each other.

Talon looks warily at Gabriel, who seems more interested in his fucking food than he does in her actions. “Morning,” she says softly.

Howie, of course, has fucking followed me to the table and taken the seat across from me, beside Gabriel. He looks at Talon and smiles the fucking smile he always uses when he’s got all his charm turned on. “Good morning, Talon,” he says. “How did you sleep last night?”

Talon looks startled, for a second or so, but she recovers pretty fucking fast. It probably fucking helps that Howie’s acting like he couldn’t hurt a fucking fly, so it’s not too goddamned surprising when Talon starts talking to him. “Morning,” she says. “I guess I slept okay. It’s just a little hard to adjust to…” She falters and glances at Gabriel. “To everything.” The last words are so fucking quiet that I’m having to strain to fucking hear her, so I really fucking doubt that Howie heard the words at all.

“It just takes some time,” Howie says, still smiling. I can’t believe he’s able to say those words without fucking gagging on his own bullshit, because he knows that shit ain’t fucking true. Most of the people that got fucking dragged to this school aren’t going to be able to fucking adjust at all, considering how fucking messed up this place is.

I don’t say any fucking thing, though, because this is Howie’s fucking show. I let him give her fucking pointless reassurances and I go grab some food off the fucking buffet station. I don’t fucking recognize ninety percent of the shit up there, but I do recognize sausage patties and biscuits, so I grab that shit and get back to my seat before Howie can get any fucking idea that I’m trying to get away from him.

I know that I personally don’t have any fucking plan on trying to escape, but I also understand that Howie doesn’t fucking trust me that much yet, so I’m trying to do everything in my fucking power to make him realize that I am telling him the goddamned truth.

When I get back to the table, Howie has managed to draw Talon into a pretty good conversation about being a girl who is mechanically inclined. I don’t add anything to the back and forth between them, because that’s not the fucking plan Howie explained to me last night.

Instead, I let the two of them talk for a good five fucking minutes while I eat my sausage biscuits. I got a feeling I won’t be able to eat much after I put Howie’s fucking plan in motion. I’m listening for a key fucking phrase to come out of Talon’s mouth—namely, her saying something about Gabriel.

It doesn’t take too long for her to bring him up, which doesn’t fucking surprise me, ‘cuz I’ve been watching Howie manipulate conversations for the last three fucking years. When she says it, Howie opens his mouth, like he’s going to say something, but I cut him off before he can.

I look straight at Gabriel across the table and ask, as bluntly as I fucking can, “After all the shit you’ve been through together, why the fuck did you bring her here?” I don’t bother censoring myself, ‘cuz I ain’t fucking worried that Gabriel is going to torture me for swearing at him.

Howie doesn’t look too happy about it, but he didn’t explicitly tell me that I couldn’t, so I ain’t too concerned. Besides which, he already told me that he was going to act like he hated me for having the audacity to ask Gabriel that kind of fucking question.

I guess Gabriel didn’t go to the same expression-smoothing class as Howie did, ‘cuz he’s staring at me with pure fucking shock. “Excuse me?” he says, and I can hear the anger in his voice. In normal circumstances, I’d be fucking terrified, but Howie’s already assured me that he won’t fucking let Gabriel hurt me. Until Howie teaches me how to hold my fucking own with these guys, I got to fucking rely on him to keep me from being killed.

“I’m pretty fucking sure I spoke clearly,” I say. “But I can repeat the question if you want me to.” I can feel Talon starting to shake beside me, but I can’t fucking spare any time for her. Not when I’m being this fucking rude to someone who could fucking _kill_ me.

Gabriel takes a couple of deep breaths and lets the air out in a quick whoosh, then turns to Howie. “Why am I being assaulted by your…” He pauses, obviously looking for a good fucking term to use for me. “ _Roommate?_ ”

Howie shrugs, and pastes such a fucking perfect expression of disinterest on his face that it almost fucking throws me, even though I fucking know it’s a part of the goddamned plan.

I manage to gather my fucking wits before he has to say something in my place, though, which is probably a good fucking thing, ‘cuz he just fucking nudged me under the table, and I’m pretty fucking sure that it’s a warning to get my ass in gear.

“Since when is a fucking question an assault?” I ask Gabriel, pulling his attention back to me. Even though it’s the last fucking thing I really want to do, I want to risk Howie’s anger even fucking less.

“You’re incredibly rude,” Gabriel says to me, his lips twisting in disapproval.

“I know,” I tell him. “But I still want a fucking answer to my question.”

Gabriel doesn’t respond to me; he just looks at Howie, like he expects him to fucking make me back down or some shit.

I start to say something else, but Talon fucking yanks on my arm, and I don’t have any fucking choice but to turn to her. “Yeah?” I say, and I ain’t being rude to _her_ , ‘cuz she don’t fucking deserve that shit, but I can see out of the corner of my eye that me being polite to her is pissing Gabriel off pretty fucking bad. Good. I _want_ him pissed off. Or Howie does. Don’t make a fucking difference, ‘cuz I got to want what Howie wants now if I want to fucking stay alive _and_ torture-free.

 

 


	8. Chapter 21 through 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last half of chapter twenty-one; first half of chapter twenty-three.

Talon’s face is all but drained of color when I look at her. “Why are you messing with them?” she hisses at me, under her breath. She’s obviously fucking terrified of Gabriel.

Which is actually what Howie wants me to fucking rectify. “Listen,” I tell her, making sure my voice is loud enough that both Howie and Gabriel can hear me. “I don’t know if it’s the same for you or not, but I’ve known him,” I say, jerking my head towards Howie. “For the last three goddamned years. And the only fucking thing I know for sure is that while he might be an assassin, he’s still the same fucking person.”

Talon stares at me in complete fucking shock. It takes her a second to find the words that she wants to say, but eventually she does fucking find them. “How are you so sure about that?” she asks, and the question is so goddamned quiet I have to strain to fucking hear her.

“Look at it like this,” I tell her. “You got your own fucking personality and shit. Does that change when you work on cars?” She shakes her head no, so I go on. “Well, the way I see it is sorta like that. They got the same fucking personalities they’ve always had, only now I know that they kill people. So it’d be like me not knowing you work on cars, then finding out you work on cars and deciding that because you work on cars, you’re a completely different fucking person than the one I know.”

Talon is fucking speechless. Of course she is. I just gave her a new fucking mindset to work with, ‘cuz Howie decided last night that he wanted me to figure out a way to get the other fucking scholarship students on board with his shit. And the first step to doing that, of course, is to get them to fucking accept the fact that the friends they’ve had for the last three fucking years are still the same goddamned people they’ve always known.

But Howie didn’t give me any fucking clue as to how I was supposed to do it. He just fucking told me to find a way to fucking make the others see the shit going on in this school the way that I do. And that ain’t going to be as fucking easy as he might think, ‘cuz my mindset’s pretty goddamned unique.

“Working on cars is different,” Talon says, and the words are nearly a fucking whisper. I get that she’s scared and shit, but seriously, the girl needs to speak the fuck up a little. I’m sitting right fucking beside her and I can barely fucking hear her.

I roll my eyes at her. “How many fucking people in your life have treated you different ‘cuz they found out you like to fucking work on cars?” I ask her.

She gives me a startled look, then smiles faintly. “A lot,” she says. “But this is different. They _kill_ people. Jake, they brought us here to kill us.”

“Are you fucking sure about that?” I ask her. “Has Gabriel over there fucking said to your face that he wants to kill you? ‘Cuz I got a fucking feeling that those words haven’t come out of his goddamned mouth.” I give her a second to process that, then add, “Of course, I don’t fucking know the guy, so you tell me. Has he fucking said that shit to you himself? Or has the speech that lady gave us yesterday convinced you that he’d do shit he hasn’t said himself he’d do?”

It isn’t until I ask her that I realize why I have a lot less fucking fear of Howie than the other scholarship students seem to be having of the assassins they’re paired with. Mariah’s fucking speech shook me up pretty fucking badly, but it was still a speech from someone I don’t fucking know. Even if everything she said was the fucking truth, and I’m pretty fucking sure it was considering everything Howie’s told me, I couldn’t put a whole lot of fucking faith in her words last night. ‘Cuz I’ve gotten fucking used to strangers telling me shit just to get under my skin. And even with all the crazy shit going on around me, Howie’s still the only fucking person here I actually fucking know.

Talon takes a few minutes to actually fucking _think_ about the shit I’ve just said, which makes me hopeful that she will be able to pull her shit together and get on board with this enforcer thing. I don’t fucking know how Gabriel plans to make Talon his enforcer, considering she’s fucking tiny and probably won’t ever be able to hold her own against trained killers, but that ain’t my fucking concern.

All I got to do is get her to understand that the people we’ve thought of as friends for the last three fucking years are _still_ our goddamned friends, just a little bit different. Well, a lot different, but what the fuck ever. I need Talon as a fucking ally ‘cuz Howie’s plan to get rid of the killing part of the curriculum here means that he needs as much fucking support as he can get in the next four years.

“I never thought about it like that,” Talon says. This time, when she speaks, I can actually fucking hear her without hurting myself ‘cuz she says the shit loud enough that Gabriel and Howie can hear her, too. And fuck me, she’s stopped shaking. Guess she really did fucking think about the shit I said. Which kinda surprises me, not gonna lie, ‘cuz people tend to brush me the fuck off.

She looks at Gabriel. “Will you answer Jake’s question?” she asks. “Because I would really like to hear the answer from you.”

Gabriel and Howie exchange looks that I can’t fucking read, which pisses me the fuck off, but I keep my temper ‘cuz there’s not a fucking fight in sight that I can win. Goddamn it. I really need a fucking fight to work out some of this fucking tension.

Gabriel gives Talon a slow nod and starts talking. “I brought you to this school for two reasons,” he tells her. “The first reason is simply that I had no choice in the matter, because I _am_ an assassin, and I can’t become a professional one unless I graduate from this school.” A hint of distress crosses his face. “The current curriculum at this school works exactly the way that Mariah Young said yesterday.”

Talon’s voice shakes when she speaks, but at least she’s fucking communicating with the guy now. Not like fucking yesterday, when it was all Howie could fucking do to get her to stop fucking crying. “So you did bring me here to kill me, then,” she says. And there’s a bit of a hysterical edge to her voice, but it don’t quite hit a fucking screech, thank fuck. I ain’t got no interest in having a girl fucking screeching in my ear.

“Not exactly,” Gabriel says. With Talon’s full attention focused on him, he continues. “You see, Howard here has come up with an alternative to that. The school rules still state that we have to kill you to graduate but they also say that we can graduate if you prove yourselves to be invaluable assets worth more alive than dead.”

Talon nods slowly. “I vaguely remember hearing that lady say something like that.”

“Yeah, she talks about it every time she gives that speech,” Gabriel says. “But she always makes sure to mention it at the worst time, so that it doesn’t really sink in for most of the people who hear it.”

“You said there were two reasons you brought me here,” Talon says. “You’ve told me the first. What’s the second?”

“Honestly?” Gabriel sighs. “I just wanted to get you away from all the crap you’ve had to deal with.” He laughs self-depreciatingly. “I know bringing you here only really changed the kind of crap you have to deal with, instead of getting you away from it completely, but at least I can keep you safe here.”

Talon smirks at him. “In other words,” she says. “You brought me to the most dangerous place in the world in order to keep me safe.” She shakes her head in amusement. “Gabriel, I don’t know if I’ve told you this lately, but you are certifiable.”

He grins. “I know,” he says. It’s pretty clear that he’s a lot less on the fucking edge now, so I’m starting to believe that Howie fucking _meant_ it when he said that he considered me his best fucking friend. If Talon’s distress was making Gabriel upset, then there’s no fucking way he really wants to kill her.

And Talon, well, it’s obvious that she’s feeling a lot fucking better about being here now. Which means, incidentally, that I’ve done exactly what Howie fucking wanted me to do. I chance a glance at him and he’s got that fucking satisfied smirk I’ve seen a million fucking times plastered on his face. Of course, the only fucking way that I even know that, considering to anyone else it would look like he was fucking bored or something, is the fact that I fucking _know_ Howie. I just got to fucking keep reminding myself of that fact, ‘cuz I got a feeling it might get a little fucking difficult to reconcile all this new shit with the person I’ve known for the last three fucking years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

 

          It feels like it takes forever for breakfast to end, but it finally does, and I follow Howie out of the over-sized cafeteria. I ain’t got no idea why the people who designed this school think that a cafeteria needs to be anywhere near that big, considering I only saw about a hundred fucking people during the meal. But I ain’t got no idea why the rich do the crazy shit they do, either, so I guess it’s not all that surprising that the size of the cafeteria doesn’t make any sense to me.

          I’m just glad I managed to get Talon and Gabriel back on speaking terms with each other, ‘cuz it means I ain’t gotta worry too much about Howie finding a reason to fucking torture me today. I mean, I still got shit I gotta do for him before the day is over, but at least that part of it is over.

          Howie leads me to a classroom that is about the same size as the guest bedroom that me, Alan, Marvin, and Talon shared the other night. It’s still way too freaking big for a classroom, but I’m starting to understand that the people who designed this freaking school did everything on a ridiculous freaking scale.

          Despite the large size of the classroom, all the desks in it are pretty close together. Granted, the desks are the fanciest ones I’ve ever seen in my life, but at least there are only about twenty-five of them. I’m still caught up on how fucking big that cafeteria is, ‘cuz a freaking lunchroom shouldn’t be bigger than a goddamned baseball stadium.

          Howie chooses to take the seat that is exactly in the freaking middle of the room. Three rows over and three rows back. He makes it seem like it’s not intentional, ‘cuz he’s really fucking good at making things seem casual, but I’m not fooled for a second.

          I know that Howie needs to get everyone on his side, and he’s going to be playing lots of little power games that will help him accomplish that. His “casual” decision to sit right in the fucking middle of the room is just a goddamned play for power.

          If I were someone else, maybe I’d find the shit he’s doing petty, but honestly, he’s so fucking subtle that I can’t help but be a little impressed. Hell, the guy managed to convince me that he was _nice_ and he sure as shit isn’t that. Anyone who is willing and able to torture someone they say they consider to be their best fucking friend ain’t a nice goddamned person.

          But I don’t think it makes him a bad person, either. I just think it makes him ruthless, and I’m okay with ruthless. I’m not exactly nice myself. So I get that part of him. Hell, it’s the first time I’ve felt like I can actually relate to the guy on a decent level, ‘cuz I used to wonder how the hell he could manage to be so goddamned nice all the fucking time.

          Now I know that it was just a method of manipulation for him. Just a tool for him to use. Which makes me feel kinda shitty, seeing as I’m one of the people he manipulated, but it also makes me feel a little bit of fucking admiration. Not a whole lot of people can say they’ve managed to fool me, so when it happens, I can’t help but be a little fucking impressed. Am I pissed? Of course I’m fucking pissed. But I can be impressed and pissed off at the same goddamned time.

          But the shit he’s doing in this room, I already know he’s got it all planned out. The guy is fucking _meticulous_ when it comes to planning shit out. I mean, he kept me up ‘til midnight detailing everything he wanted me to do today and for the next few weeks. And just the stuff he wants me to do today took him two fucking hours to tell me last night. I got a feeling that he does not fucking like it if things don’t go according to his plans, so I’m planning on doing the best I fucking can to stay on track.

          I know the code I got hanging on the wall back in my parents house says that I shouldn’t let people push me around and all, but I’m still trying to figure out if I consider what Howie wants me to do _pushing._ On one hand, yeah, I’m doing this shit partly because I know he is willing and able to torture me if I don’t. But on the other hand, I’m actually pretty fucking interested in this new world I’ve found myself in.

          ‘Cuz it is nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before, and I can’t help but want to explore it a little. And what better way to do that then to get embroiled in the schemes of one of the major players of this world? And yeah, it’s a little fucking crazy for me to want to do this, but I ain’t never said anything about being sane.

          ‘Sides, I figure it’s better for me to try to figure out this world so I can figure out how to fight for my right to live in than to just give up and accept my fate. I ain’t never fucking believed in destiny. All those people out there who say they were fated to do something or fated to fall in love or fated to do any fucking thing else are just a bunch of crackpots, as far as I can tell.

          Am I jaded and cynical? You fucking bet your ass I am. But anyone who isn’t jaded and cynical is a fucking moron, ‘cuz the truth about life is that it is goddamned hard. But people don’t like to fucking admit that, so they do the best they can to ignore it and cover it up.

          And adults are the worst for that shit, ‘cuz they try to tell us what we can read, what kind of music we can listen to, and even who are fucking friends should be. I guess they fucking forget what it’s like to be a teenager or something, ‘cuz they try to cushion us against the whole fucking world.

          But you know something? It don’t fucking work. Especially not on me. The more people try to “protect” me or tell me that something is “for my own good,” the more it pisses me the fuck off. ‘Cuz they don’t fucking know me. They aren’t the person inside my head with my thoughts and my feelings and they sure as hell ain’t going through the same fucking shit that I’m going through. So what gives the goddamned right to try to protect me?

          I mean, just look at the situation I’m in right now. I’m at a fucking school full of _trained assassins._ I’m living a life you can’t even watch horror movies about, because this shit doesn’t actually happen. Except, guess what? It fucking does, ‘cuz I’m in the goddamned middle of it.

          I guess no one ever really knows what is going to fucking happen in life, ‘cuz life is hard and it’s messy and it’s complicated. Other people try to break shit down into black and white, I guess ‘cuz they can’t imagine that the world is as cruel as it seems, but I ain’t tried to do that shit since I was ten. ‘Cuz I was ten when I finally fucking accepted the fact that my parents were never going to love me, no matter how much I fucking wanted them to or how much I fucking tried to make them happy.

          And maybe some people have fucking happy families, where their parents try to keep them safe and protected and actually treat them with some goddamned respect, but I never had that. And I got a feeling that a lot of the scholarship students that were brought into this school never had that, either. ‘Cuz it takes a certain amount of fucking hardship before a person becomes hard themselves. It takes pain and all the scholarship students I met the other day have definitely had their fair fucking share. More than their fair share, I’d guess, considering how rough all their stories were.

          And I got a feeling that all the assassins in this school are hard people themselves. I ain’t got no fucking idea what kind of training they had to go through when they were in elementary school, but the assignment they were given for their middle school years was pretty messed up. I mean, they were told to pick a middle school and single someone out to become friends with. But, oh hey, here’s the catch: Whoever you choose to become friends with, you have to bring to high school with you. And to graduate high school, you gotta kill that friend.

          Yeah. I’d say that would make anyone hard pretty fucking fast. I mean, I ain’t never been on that end, for obvious fucking reasons, but I can’t imagine it’s easy being told to go be friends with someone that you then have to kill in seven years. But I could be wrong. I ain’t never claimed to be a fucking expert on any of this shit. Maybe killing friends is just par for the course for these guys. For all I know, they could all be purebred psychopaths. But I’m not really all that inclined to believe that, ‘cuz neither Howie or Gabriel seem like emotionless monsters to me.

          As soon as Howie takes a seat in the middle of the room, I take the desk immediately behind him. He told me last night that the assassins always arrange themselves according to their unspoken status, so I’m pretty fucking aware that sitting directly behind him means that I’m declaring myself to everyone else as being his fucking enforcer. I’m really just his support until he trains me how to fucking fight these guys, but I got no fucking problem acting more confident than I actually feel. I got a whole lifetime’s worth of experience of doing that shit.

          Gabriel takes the seat two desks ahead of Howie, at the very front of the room, and that tells me that Gabriel is Howie’s right-hand man. Talon takes the seat right behind Gabriel, so I got a feeling that Gabriel’s given her a quick run-down on what Howie’s overall plan actually is.

          The four of us are the first ones into the classroom, which is all because of Howie’s fucking plan, and we sit there waiting for the rest of the students to show up. It takes about ten minutes for the rest of them to arrive, and I watch with a critical eye as they take their seats.

          I can tell the assassins from the scholarship students without any fucking problem, ‘cuz aside from me and Talon, the scholarship students all look either cowed, terrified, angry, or all three. In contrast, all the assassin students don’t show any of their emotions on their faces. I doubt it means they don’t actually feel anything, just that they are able to mask their feelings by looking as bored, uninterested, and as blank as they can fucking manage.

          Two of the assassins take seats directly beside Howie, just like he said they would. I don’t know their names yet, but I know one of them is the leader of the Tanner faction and the other one is the leader of the Cornell faction, ‘cuz Howie told me that’s who would end up sitting on either side of him.

          Other assassins take seats in different places. Two of the assassins take the seats directly behind Howie in the same row I’m seated in, right next to me on either side, and another one of them sits behind me. I’m completely surrounded by assassins and it’s a little bit intimidating, but I didn’t expect it to be a fucking cakewalk. At the front of the room, Talon’s got to deal with the exact same situation, ‘cuz the other two assassins took the seats directly to the sides of her.

          More intimidating than the fact that I’m hemmed in by assassins is the fact that only me and Talon are sitting directly behind the assassins who brought us to this crazy ass school.

          Alan sits beside Gabriel, in front of the assassin that brought him here, who happens to be the only female assassin in the entire fucking room. With Talon, there’s only two girls in the entire group, and that makes me a little bit uneasy, ‘cuz I’m pretty sure that the assassin chick is the only one of the two of them who can handle herself in a fight if things get messy.

          Marvin sits in the row behind me to my left. I don’t know if the assassin that brought him here is the one directly behind me or the one directly in front of me, but that’s information I need to find out, ‘cuz the answer to it is vital. I gotta know if he’s been brought here by a Tanner, Cornell, or North faction assassin. Same with Alan. I don’t got any clue if the assassin behind him is one of Howie’s faction or not, ‘cuz the only thing Howie told me was where the other leaders would be sitting.

          Alan’s the only one I can observe, aside from Talon, and I’m pretty sure she’s fine, since we hashed shit out over breakfast. Something seems like it’s missing from him and it takes me a minute to realize that he’s not popping gum bubbles every ten seconds. That bothers me, ‘cuz while the habit annoyed the fuck out of me, it was distinctly Alan.

          So I’m figuring that the disappearance of his gum can be explained by one of two things. The best explanation would be that he is simply too stressed out by this new world we’ve found ourselves in to be able to feel comfortable popping gum like normal. And that reason is the one I want to be true, but another, more frightening explanation could be the actual culprit.

          The chick assassin that brought him to this school might not be a member of Howie’s faction. If she’s not, then Alan’s in big fucking trouble, ‘cuz that means she’s in a faction that doesn’t give a shit about whether the students they brought to this school live or die. Granted, there’s always a chance that she’s factionless, but I ain’t so sure about that.

          I mean, Howie told me that there were a few assassins whose faction was unknown to him, but there’s only twelve assassins in this room. I’m willing to bet that every single assassin here has already chosen someone to side with. Hell, a three-way split between twelve people is overkill to begin with.

          Granted, there’s more than twelve assassins starting their freshman year at this Academy, ‘cuz there are four homerooms, according to what Howie told me last night. If each homeroom class consists of at least twelve assassins, that means that there are around fifty high school assassins starting their freshman year.

          It seems completely impossible and a little bit ridiculous that a school for assassins even exists. But hell. I guess the kids of professional assassins got to go to school. And I bet those professional assassin parents never spend any real time with their kids, ‘cuz they’re probably too busy killing people. Fuck. I don’t even want to imagine what it’d be like to grow up in a house like that. Can you imagine coming home to that kind of note? _Sorry, I won’t be home tonight. Have to kill someone for work. Spaghetti’s in the fridge._ And I thought my family was fucked up.

         

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Chapter Twenty-Three

 

          The teacher for the class walks in after all of the students are seated. It’s kind of weird to me that no one says a single word to anyone before the teacher arrives, ‘cuz I’m used to listening to all sorts of conversations before classes start.

          That don’t freaking happen here. I’m guessing part of that’s because most of the scholarship students are scared out of their fucking minds. ‘Cuz I know for a fact Alan and Marvin like to talk, so it’s gotta be fear holding their tongues.

As for the assassins, well, I got nothing to go off there. ‘Cuz Howie’s never really been the super quiet type, which should be obvious, seeing as he talked to me for _hours_ last night. Maybe it’s got something to do with being back at this school or maybe it’s another aspect of the power play crap going on between him and the other two faction leaders. All I got right now are guesses.

The teacher turns to the dry-erase board behind him and writes “Raymond Phillips” in a huge, messy scrawl. Handwriting included, the guy doesn’t look like much of a teacher. He looks more like the leader of a biker gang. He’s about 6 feet even and has a broad, sturdy build. I’d say he’s at least 280, if not 300, and all of that is muscle, as far as I can tell.

He’s wearing bike leathers, which doesn’t diminish my impression of him as a biker gang leader at all. The only thing that seems out of place to me is the fact that there are no logos stitched into his leather jacket, which is unzipped to reveal the plain black tee he’s wearing underneath it. The biker boots he’s wearing complete the outfit and they’re polished to such a shine that I almost want to shield my eyes when he turns around to look at the class.

“My name is Raymond Phillips,” he says and his voice sounds like rough leather. Is there anything about this guy that doesn’t scream “biker?” ‘Cuz if there is, I ain’t seen it yet. “Other teachers you’ve had in the past have probably told you to call them by their last names. I won’t put up with it. Call me Ray or Raymond. If you call me Mr. Phillips, you _will_ regret it. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir.” I find myself joining in the chorus of all the other students in the room, including the assassins. This is the first teacher I’ve _ever_ fucking seen that I don’t want to mess with, ‘cuz he looks fucking dangerous. And while there’s the possibility that it’s a front he’s putting on, I really fucking doubt it. I’m guessing that the people who teach _assassins_ have to be pretty fucking dangerous. I mean, it’s just a guess and all, but I ain’t too fucking doubtful about this guess being a goddamned accurate one.

Ray grabs a stack of packets off his desk and hands them to Gabriel and Alan to pass back to the rest of us. As soon as the last copy hits the desk of the guy sitting behind me, Ray starts talking again.

“That handout will be your lifeline at this school,” he says. “It is what passes around here as the handbook.”

I glance at the packet on my desk and flip through it, using only the corners, to see how thick it is. It can’t be more than ten pages, which makes it incredibly unusual for a school handbook. Even though I never read through my middle school handbook, I remember how thick it was, ‘cuz I found an alternate use for it.

When I got bored after school, which was pretty much every day, I’d go for a walk with that handbook rolled up in my fist. And every time a stray dog--or any dog left off its leash to wander around--came anywhere near me, I’d use that fucking handbook to whack the dog on the nose as hard as I fucking could. It got to the point that the dogs in my neighborhood knew what time I would be coming by and started hiding from me, ‘cuz they knew none of them were safe. ‘Course, when that started happening, I just started varying the times I went for walks.

It may not be pretty, but the truth of the matter is that, after fighting, dog baiting is my favorite fucking thing to do. And I don’t give a shit who thinks it’s mean to go out and whack dogs. ‘Cuz one of the rules I live by is not to pick on the weak. And by that, I mean weak _people._ Dogs ain’t people. They’re pests. I’d rather whack a dog than plant a fist in some weak bastard that don’t know how to keep his goddamned mouth shut.

But this “handbook” is so goddamned thin that there’s no fucking way I’ll be able to use it for dog baiting. I’ll be really fucking surprised if I manage to hold on to it for more than an hour. I may be able to remember every fucking word someone says to me, but in exchange for that, I have trouble remembering where I put my fucking stuff down at it.

I got a feeling that excuse won’t fly with this teacher, though, but that doesn’t come as that much of a fucking surprise. I know for a fucking fact that Howie won’t put up with me half-assing classes the way I did during middle school, ‘cuz he said that shit to me straight out.

I’m actually paying attention to this teacher, though, ‘cuz his rough look has me convinced that if I don’t, I’m going to regret it, even without his words about that backing him up.

“You’re going to find a syllabus for all the classes you’re taking in that packet,” Ray says. “And you’ll notice that it isn’t very in-depth.” He pauses. “That’s because here at Aifam Academy we believe it’s best for students to develop their own interests in their own directions.”

He looks at Howie specifically when he says the next words. “Some of you may not like the current program and that’s okay with me, as long as you can prove to me that you are able to do what needs to be done when the time comes.”

I don’t really get what the fuck he’s trying to say to Howie, of course, because it’s so goddamned cryptic. But I do get the hint that he’s a supporter of Howie’s, considering the words themselves. That’s kinda weird to me, ‘cuz I ain’t never fucking heard of an adult supporting a kid’s efforts for anything before, let alone something as crazy as Howie’s new curriculum idea.

Granted, I ain’t got no idea what Raymond’s deal is, either, but it’s only the first day of class. Give me a week, and I’m sure I’ll have the guy figured out. That’s one of the few talents I got that I’m actually fucking proud of. With Howie as the ultimate exception to the rule, I can figure out people’s deal in a pretty fucking short amount of time.

And, to be fair, I was never really fucking sure what Howie’s deal was, ‘cuz I couldn’t have envisioned him as an assassin until I found out about this school. That wasn’t ever something that would’ve occurred to me during my middle school days, ‘cuz fuck. I hadn’t ever heard of a teenage age assassin before.

But now that I know that Howie is an assassin, a lot of things that never made sense to me before make a lot more sense now. I get why he always seemed so goddamned invested in the social scene at school; he gets involved in shit because it’s how he keeps control. It’s how he plays the power game and there ain’t no one from our middle school who would ever turn Howie away from anything exclusive.

‘Cuz he’s got this ridiculous amount of charm that lets him flash his smile and get into any fucking place he wants. I respect the hell out of the guy. Learning that he’s an assassin didn’t diminish that respect; it just added a layer of fear to it. And if you ever meet an assassin face-to-face and try to say that it doesn’t fucking terrify you, then you’re a goddamned better liar than I am. Or you gotta fucking death wish.

And, like I said before, I think people who give up and seek death out are fucking morons. Life is worth fighting for, no matter how fucking bad it seems or what you have to do that compromises your morals. I mean, fuck. Look at me. My code says not to let people push me around, but I sure as shit am letting Howie push me around. All because he is the only fucking friend I have in this place, even if I ain’t really too sure about the friend part.

“You’ll notice,” Ray says. “That there are only three required classes listed on your syllabus and only one assignment for each. What that means is that you have to attend those classes, learn the content, and do a single year-long project for that content.”

“For those of you in the scholarship program, doing these projects are optional. Most of you won’t make it out of this school with your lives.” He pauses again, letting that sink in, and I can see the scholarship students near me starting to tremble with fear. Even Talon is shaking a little bit, and I don’t fucking blame her. Having a teacher, of all people, put that shit so fucking bluntly is incredibly hard to handle.

Fuck, it’s even hard for me to handle, but I’m better at hiding my fear. Especially ‘cuz I can keep reminding myself that Howie doesn’t have any fucking plans to kill me if I can do what the fuck he wants me to do successfully. Granted, it ain’t going to be easy, and I’m probably not going to like doing a whole fucking lot of it, but I got a feeling I can find a way to get it done. Staying alive means so much to me that I ain’t got time to deal with the panic and fear the very idea of failing at the task Howie’s given me.    

 


	9. Chapter 23 thru 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rest of chapter 23 here with all of chapter 24

“For those of you not in the scholarship program, the projects are mandatory. For anyone who chooses to do the project, you must make an 80 or higher in order to pass. If you make anything below an 80 on any of the three projects, you will be held back.” Ray pauses, to let that sink in, then adds, “If any scholarship student turns in a project, their grade will be added to the grade of the assassin they’re paired with. Those grades will be averaged together, and if the average is lower than an 80, both students will be held back.”

          I fucking wince at that news, ‘cuz Howie’s already told me he expects me to participate in all the classes. I got a feeling if I do badly on these projects to the point it affects Howie’s ability to transition from a freshman to a sophomore, then us being friends ain’t gonna account for much. I got to make sure I pass with flying fucking colors, ‘cuz I ain’t gonna give Howie no goddamned reason to think of me as being a liability instead of an asset.

          I open the packet he’s handed out in order to see what three classes it is that we are required to take. The first one listed is “Relevant History,” while the second is “Dirty Tactics,” and the third is “Melding.”

          While Howie might’ve told me last night that I had to pass all these freaking classes, he never fucking mentioned that they were weird ass shit like this. I mean, fuck. _Relevant_ history? Who the fuck gets to decide what is and isn’t relevant about history? It makes me fucking furious, but I clench my fists and hold myself in check. In a room full of assassins, the only person who will get hurt if I can’t keep my temper ismy own goddamned self.

          “I’d like a show of hands,” Ray says. “How many of the scholarship students plan on participating in these classes?”

          While the other scholarship students glance nervously around at each other, I raise my hand without hesitation. It don’t fucking matter how goddamned weird these classes sound to me; if Howie wants me to take them, then it probably means that doing so is the best fucking way for me to keep myself alive. And I’m pretty goddamned sure if my hand doesn’t go into the air in response to Ray’s question that Howie will be more than fucking happy to torture me for going against the shit he told me to do. 

          For a second that seems like a goddamned eternity, my hand is the only one in the fucking air. I’m starting to think that it’s going to remain that way when Talon cautiously raises her hand up, too. After me and Talon raise our hands, Alan and Marvin raise theirs. There are only two scholarship students who don’t raise their hands, and I got no fucking clue who they are, and I ain’t so sure I care.

          “Wow,” Ray says. “I’m surprised that so many of you are willing to participate in these classes.” He chuckles, then asks, “Now how many of you dumbasses were actually told by your partner that you have to participate in the classes?”

          Alan, Marvin, and Talon all lower their hands. I’m the only one with my hand still up. Of course I fucking am. Howie didn’t tell me whether I should answer questions like that honestly or not, and he knows me fucking well enough by now to know that I answer shit honestly ‘less I got a damned good reason not to.

          “What’s your name?” Ray asks, looking directly at me.

          “Jake, sir,” I say, moving my arm back down by my side.

          “Who is your partner?”

          I’m a little taken aback by the question, ‘cuz I figured that the teacher would know the fucking power play bullshit going on in the room, but he seems like he really doesn’t know the answer. Maybe power is vied for in different fucking ways by adults. Maybe they don’t need to figure out the best fucking place for them to sit in a room in order to stand out as the most leader-like person in it. How the fuck should I know? Adult shit don’t make no goddamned sense to me.

          “Howard North is my partner, sir.”

          Ray’s eyes widen and he looks at Howard, completely dismissing me. “Is this true, North?” he asks. “Did you tell your partner that he had to participate in the classes at this school?”

          I can’t see Howie’s goddamned expression, but I’m fucking sure he’s got that smug little next-to-unreadable smirk on his face right now. He has always loved surprising people and that he’s already managed to upset the balance in our homeroom on the first day probably has him feeling fucking fantastic.

          “Yes, Raymond,” Howie says. He’s the first person who has spoken to the teacher without calling him sir and I’m willing to fucking bet he’s doing it to prove a goddamned point. It’s just another fucking power play; I’m starting to see that it is always going to be one power play after another with this guy.

          “You told him to participate in these classes,” Ray says slowly, like he still can’t quite fucking believe it. “Are you aware that there have only been three scholarship students who have ever passed these classes?”

          “I’m aware,” Howie says.

          My gut is fucking churning right now, ‘cuz _I_ sure as hell didn’t fucking know that shit until just now. Howie expects me to pass three fucking classes that only _three_ other fucking people have been able to pass? I mean, I’m sure the assassins here won’t have any fucking issue with passing the classes, ‘cuz they sound fucking _tailored_ to suit assassins.

          Fuck. I mean, _relevant_ history? Dirty tactics? Melding? There ain’t no other fucking school that teaches that shit. At least, I ain’t ever fucking heard of one. Granted, I ain’t heard of fucking everything, but I’m pretty goddamned sure that the majority of high schools have a standard math, English, history, and science curriculum.

          The teacher stares at Howie for a second too long, but he obviously figures out that he’s being rude, ‘cuz he pulls his gaze away. The fact that he stares at Howie that long has all the fucking muscles in my body tense, ‘cuz I know how much Howie hates being stared at. And he hates that shit as much as I hate it when someone makes a statement that makes it fucking obvious that they are judging me without any background information to go off of.

          I’m half-afraid that Howie is going to fucking jump this teacher, but he doesn’t. Of course he fucking doesn’t. I got to keep reminding myself that even if Howie is a goddamned assassin, he still doesn’t have my fucking temperament. He’s not the kind that leaps into the goddamned fray the way that I do. He’s more of the type to hang back and pick the perfect fucking moments to drive his point home.

          Ray swallows, and the motion is almost fucking invisible, but I see it, ‘cuz I’m on high fucking alert. Even though I’m sitting in this goddamned chair, I got so much fucking adrenaline coursing through my veins right now that it’s a fucking miracle I’m able to keep myself from leaping to my feet and throwing myself head-first at the nearest assassin. I am _that_ fucking desperate for a fight, ‘cuz fighting’s the only goddamned thing I know to do in order to alleviate some of this fucking fear I’m feeling.

          But seeing that tell-tale swallow tells me a whole fucking lot more than he probably ever wants anyone to find out. ‘Cuz that shit tells me that he’s not as macho as he’s pretending to be; he’s just as afraid of the assassins sitting in front of him as everyone else in this goddamned room who isn’t an assassin themselves.

          But it don’t mean that the man isn’t fucking tough, ‘cuz he definitely is that. I mean, he ain’t a goddamned assassin. I thought he was, at first, but now I’m fucking sure that he ain’t. ‘Cuz if he were one, he wouldn’t be afraid of the ones sitting in this room. I mean, I’m sure there are assassins who are afraid of each other, but an adult assassin would not be afraid of a teenage one. Ain’t no fucking way.

          And now, of course, I’m fucking curious. ‘Cuz now I want to know why this guy is willing to teach a school full of assassins without being one himself. I mean, fuck, where the hell did the school administration even find him? I’m sure it isn’t fucking easy finding someone willing to teach assassins.

          Ray doesn’t let the silence his staring at Howie has caused stand for long. He breaks it maybe a few seconds after he stops staring at Howie, and turns to me. “Were you aware that your partner asked you to do something with such a low success rate?”

          For the first time since we got in this goddamned classroom, Howie shifts in his seat and turns to look at me. He doesn’t say anything to me, but he doesn’t really need to. His eyes speak volumes. I give him a slow nod, letting him know I got his fucking message, and he turns back around.

          Then I look at Ray and tell him, “No. Howard didn’t tell me that.” I grin at him, like it don’t fucking matter to me that the classes are supposed to be hard to pass. “He just told me I had to take them.”

          Ray chews on that for a minute. The next time he starts talking, he addresses Howard. Once again, I am being dismissed. But that’s fine. It’s only the first day of classes. I got plenty of time to build my reputation up to the point it needs to be at by the end of my senior year if I’m going to end it alive.

          “Why did you tell your partner that he has to pass these classes?” Ray asks. Just hearing the question makes me wince, ‘cuz Howie doesn’t like it when people get involved in his business. Hell, he said he considers me his best friend and he didn’t like me getting in his business during middle school. I’m guessing while that might have changed, due to the circumstances, he’s still the same guy who fucking hates it when others try to figure him out.

          Howie answers the question calmly, which doesn’t ease my anxiety at all, ‘cuz he only ever sounds that fucking calm when he’s seriously pissed off. “Because Jake’s life belongs to me,” he states. “Any other questions?”

          “No,” Ray says, and I ain’t surprised that his voice shakes just a little as he speaks. That Howie was able to say that fucking line so matter-of-factly has him shaken. And I get that, ‘cuz it fucking shakes me, too. But I ain’t got time to dwell on that shit, so I try and push it to the back of my mind.

          For his part, Ray switches back to talking about the classes, instead of singling me and Howie out. “For those of you who raised your hands and weren’t told by your partners that you needed to take these classes, you have an easy out. Like I said, the pass rate for scholarship students is incredibly low. And if you fail, your partner fails. Knowing that, are there any of you who are still willing to participate in the classes this school offers?”

          Talon and Alan exchange nervous glances at the front. Beside me, Marvin tries to catch my eye, but I ignore him. I can’t make a fucking decision like that for him and I ain’t remotely interested in trying to help him with it, either. I got my own shit to deal with. If Howie really wants to turn the rest of these scholarship kids into enforcers, then I got to get them to realize that every fucking thing they do affects whether or not they live. But I also got to make sure they get that they are the only fucking people who can make their decisions. I ain’t going to let them lean on me. I ain’t a fucking post.

          Talon leans forward and whispers something in Gabriel’s ear, and he gives her a slight nod in response. She’s the only fucking person in this room that has deigned to talk to their assassin partner at all. I ain’t talking to Howie, ‘cuz I ain’t got no fucking need to, but the rest of these kids need to start accepting the fact that their assassin partner is the one who will, ultimately, decide whether they live or die.

          Alan watches Talon talk to Gabriel and I see his brow furrow in thought. After Talon sits back, having received whatever fucking answer she was looking for from Gabriel, Alan twists around to look at the assassin behind him. I can’t fucking hear him, because he drops his voice so low I doubt anyone but that chick can hear him, but I’m guessing he’s consulting with her. I mean, what the fuck else would he be doing after a question like that from the teacher?

          Marvin is the only one among them who doesn’t make any effort whatsoever to communicate with his partner. It irritates the fuck out of me, ‘cuz it makes me think that he ain’t accepted what the fucking reality of this place is yet, but I keep my temper by reminding myself that it’s only been one fucking day since we found this shit out. And there ain’t a whole lot of people who can roll with the punches the way I can, but I guess that’s ‘cuz there ain’t a lot of people who started learning how to roll with them as early as I did.

          “Well?” Ray asks.

          Talon and Alan both raise their hands and, out of the corner of my eye, I can see Marvin’s hand going up as well. My jaw clenches. At least Alan and Talon fucking talked to their partners before making a decision like that. Marvin didn’t even fucking bother. I’m pretty sure that the assassin sitting behind me is his partner, but I ain’t got any clue whose faction the guy is on.

          “Gabriel, Slim, Bree. Are all three of you okay with your partners participating in these classes? Remember that if they fail, their grade is added to yours, then averaged. That means if you make a hundred and they make a fifty, you will both be held back a year.”

          Gabriel shrugs. “I’ve got no objections,” he says.

          “Me either,” the girl says. I’m guessing that she’s the one Ray addressed as Bree, ‘cuz I can’t imagine a girl being saddled with a name like ‘Slim,’ not even as a fucking nickname.

          “What about you, Slim?” Ray asks, directing his attention to the assassin behind me. “Do you have any objections?”

          “I don’t give a fuck what he does, as long as he doesn’t fail.” Slim sounds bored and angry at the same time, which makes me feel a little fucking sorry for Marvin. ‘Cuz the truth is, Slim sounds what I would sound like if I were an assassin. I got a feeling he’s a whole fucking lot like me and that don’t sit too well.

          Ray nods. “All right,” he says. He looks at the other two scholarship students who didn’t raise their hands. “The two of you are free to fuck off,” he says.

          “Where are we supposed to go?” one of them asks.

          “I don’t give a fuck where you go,” Ray tells them. “But if you aren’t participating in classes, then you’re useless to me. I don’t need useless fuckers in my classroom, so scram.”

          The two of them don’t wait to be told again; they are out the door so fast I can feel the wind from where they ran past me. I’m half-expecting the assassins partnered with them to bolt out the door after them to make sure they ain’t trying to escape or nothing, but I guess it ain’t really necessary. I mean, this is a school full of assassins. Not like those guys can go very fucking far.

          “Now that I have all the real students in this room,” Ray says. “Let’s talk about what these classes are.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Four

 

          It takes Ray about fifteen minutes to explain each class in-depth, and I ain’t got no interest in repeating those fucking words verbatim, ‘cuz it was painful enough listening to him yap the first fucking time. I can’t stand boring ass school shit like this, and all I want to do is get up and fucking _move._ Listening to him go on and on about these fucking projects is killing me.

          At least I got the fucking gist of what the classes are now, though. I’m sure that’s going to be pretty fucking useful information later on. Relevant History, apparently, is the history of the assassin community as it stands today. So it’s pretty fucking obvious that I don’t have any fucking clue about any of that shit. I’m hoping I can convince Howie to bring me up to speed on that shit or something, ‘cuz there ain’t no way I can cram the history of these assassins into my brain in less than a year.

          Dirty Tactics, in contrast, seems like it’s going to be a pretty fun fucking class. Not to mention useful. It’s exactly what it sounds like, which means I’m going to get to learn how these assassins strategize. It means I’m going to be able to fucking find a way to use them against these guys myself, if I got any chance in hell of making Howie’s plan a reality.

          And Melding, well…that one’s got me a bit worried, if I’m being fucking honest. ‘Cuz it’s a class about how to blend into the environment around you and how to seem like you belong no matter where you are. In essence, it’s what Howie’s got the most fucking skill in. And it’s definitely an area where I’m fucking lacking, considering how little issue I have with standing out. Fuck, I practically revel in standing out. So learning how to blend in is definitely not going to be an easy fucking class for me.

          The projects we have to do for each class have to be individual projects. Which means I can’t do a project at all similar to Howie’s if I want to pass the class, ‘cuz then it will look I’m fucking lazy. And I got a feeling that no one in this goddamned school will accept a project they view as having been done by a lazy ass person.

          “Before I dismiss you for the day,” Ray says. “There’s one last thing I need to talk to you about. If you look at the very last sheet in the packet I gave you, you’ll find a code printed there.”

          I flip to the back, like the rest of the class, and stare at the words above the code. “Cell Phone Access Code.” What? Howie fucking told me that only assassins have the ability to call out of this place. I glare at his back, ‘cuz I can’t confront him in the middle of class, and realize that his shoulders are tense. Fuck. That means that this is not something that figured into his plans. And that can only mean that something fucking horrible is about to happen.

          “Before you get too excited,” Ray says. “Every code on those pages requires a voiceprint from a registered assassin for it to work. For every call. That means if your assassin partner grants you the right to call a family member or a friend one time, then they will have to say the code into your phone for it to work. For every single call they allow you to make, they will have to say the same code they used for you the first time in order to make it work. That means that if you lose those packets, you’re screwed.”

          “They aren’t going to let us call out of here anyway,” Marvin says. “What is the point of giving these codes to us?”

          “I don’t make the rules,” Ray tells him. “The Dean of this school does. And he says that every student gets a cell phone access code. Whether or not you are given the right to use that code depends entirely upon you and the trust your partner has in you.”

          Marvin snorts. “No one in here trusts their partner enough to let them call out.”

          Howie’s shoulders relax, and I let out a silent sigh of relief. I don’t want him fucking tense, ‘cuz that means he’s pissed, which is the last fucking thing I want. But with him relaxing like that, it’s got to mean he’s got a fucking plan.

          “Maybe not,” Ray says. “But trust is something that has to be earned.”

          “How are we supposed to trust the people who betrayed us by bringing us here?” Marvin asks. “They brought us here to kill us. You’re telling us to earn the trust of the people who want to kill us, but they are the ones who betrayed our trust in the first place. What makes you think there’s any possibility that trust can be repaired between any of us?”

          Ray turns to the rest of us. “Do you guys feel the same way about your partners? Alan, Talon, Jake? Do all of you feel like you have been betrayed because your partner brought you here?” When no one answers him, he focuses on Alan. “Alan? Do you feel that Bree betrayed you by bringing you to this school?”

          He hesitates a second before he answers, then sighs and says, “Yes. I do feel like she betrayed me when she brought me here. I trusted her implicitly before this; I’m not sure how I’m supposed to be able to trust her now.”

          Ray looks at Talon. “And you, Talon? Do you feel betrayed?”

          Talon shifts uncomfortably in her seat, but tells the truth. “Yes,” she says. “I don’t understand why Gabriel brought me to this school. I don’t understand why he brought me to a place this dangerous. I don’t want to die.”

          Then, of course, Ray turns the question on me. “What about you, Jake? You’re the only person here who has been told that you have to take these classes. You’re the only person here who hasn’t gotten to make his own decision about whether or not you wanted to risk causing your partner to fail. Doesn’t that make you angry? Do you feel betrayed by Howard?”

          I start to reply when I realize that Howie’s shoulders are shaking with silent laughter. It’s rare that Howie laughs so hard he can’t keep his amusement from showing, but Ray’s little spiel has really got him going. “I’m sorry,” he says, then promptly bursts into peals of laughter. It takes him a couple minutes, but he finally puts himself back together. “I’m good now. Jake, answer the man’s question.” Another little chuckle escapes him. And, I got to admit, I’m a little amused myself. Especially after I just watched what amounts to Howie howling with laughter, even though it could never accurately be called howling.

          “No,” I say to Ray, and I can’t keep the smirk off my face. “I’m not angry at Howard for telling me to take these classes and I don’t feel betrayed by him for bringing me to this school.”

          “Why not?” Ray asks. I can tell that Howie’s laughing spell has him on edge because he’s eyeing Howie like he’s trying to figure out whether or not he needs to start running.

          “I just don’t,” I tell him. Fuck if I’m giving him my reasons. But I guess I got to give him something to chew on. Hell. If I’m gonna do this enforcer bullshit, guess I need to act a little smug. “I guess ‘cuz I figure it ain’t gonna be no problem for me to do the shit I need to do here in order to get that valuable asset clause invoked.”

          Ray lets out a low whistle. “A little overconfident, aren’t you, Jake?” he asks. “Let me just ask you one question. Do you know what Howard North is capable of doing to you if you cross him?”

          I raise an eyebrow at him and hold up my bruised hand. “If you’re talking about the torture, yeah, I got the memo.” I shrug at the startled looks Alan, Talon, and Marvin all give me. “But if you’re waiting for me to say I’m pissed off at him or that I feel betrayed by him, you’re going to be waiting a long goddamned time.”

          “Okay,” Ray says, then turns to Howie. “Do you trust him enough to let him call someone? On the very first day of school, less than twenty-four hours after he found out that you’re an assassin?”

          In answer, Howie turns to me. “Give me your phone, Jake.”

          I hand it over wordlessly. I ain’t stupid. This is another one of Howie’s goddamned tests. And I’m very fucking aware that if I fail it, I got six assassins sitting in the room with me to make sure it’s the last fucking thing I do.

          Ray looks at Talon. “Who would you call if you could? What would you say to them?” He asks, while Howie is fiddling with my phone. I don’t know what the fuck he’s doing, but I don’t really give a shit.

          Talon stares at her desk for a minute before she answers. “I would call my mom,” she says. She hesitates. “And I’d probably ask her for help. I don’t think I’d be able to stop myself. This place is just too weird.”

          “Alan?”

          “My mom, too, I guess.” He shifts awkwardly in his seat. “And I don’t think I could keep from telling her what was going on here, either.”

          “Marvin?”

          “My older sister. I’d ask her for help in a heartbeat.”

          Then, of fucking course, he turns to me. “What about you, Jake? Who are you going to call, assuming Howie lets you?”

          I shrug. There’s only one fucking answer to that question. “My friend Jess.”

          “And what are you going to tell her?”

          I smirk at him. “Why don’t you fucking listen to the call yourself?”

          Ray stares at me, and there’s turmoil there that I don’t fucking understand. But I don’t need to understand it, ‘cuz it’s got nothing to fucking do with me. “How are you so sure that Howard will let you make a call? How do you know he didn’t just confiscate your phone?”

          “’Cuz unlike the rest of you fucking cowards, I actually have a backbone.” Taking a deep breath, I summon the courage I need to do something I know is fucking stupid—but I need to fucking do it, because it’s going to drive my point home and it’s going to help Howie out in the long run—and say, “Howie, if you’re done fiddling with my phone, I’d like to call Jess now.”

          Howie turns to face me while the rest of the room goes dead silent. He flashes me a quick grin, so I know I made the right fucking decision (and my heart stops trying to leap out of my fucking chest), and hands me the phone. Speaking loudly enough that everyone in the room can hear him, he says, “I fixed it so you can call out whenever you want as long as you punch the right code in.” He leans in and whispers a string of eight letters and words. “Call whoever you want.”

          The tension in the room fucking skyrockets. Part of me wants to fucking leap for joy, ‘cuz now I can talk to Jess whenever the hell I feel like it, but the rest of me fucking knows that this is a test. And yeah, it’s a test that is coming fucking _hard_ on the heels of all the shit I found out less than a day ago, but that don’t fucking matter. Howie’s the only fucking person that’s ever seen me as being able to live up to any fucking thing in my entire goddamned life. Even with all this crazy shit, I ain’t about to let him down.

          “Thanks,” I say. I look Ray in the eye and ask, “Do you want me to call Jess now?”

          “Yes,” Ray says. “I don’t think Howard North actually gave you the access he says he did.”

          I raise an eyebrow at him. “You better be fucking careful what you accuse Howard of lying about,” I tell him. “’Cuz he don’t fucking like that shit at all.”

          Ray scoffs at me. “I think I know Mr. North quite a bit better than you do, Jake. I have known him since he was five years old.”

          “Oh yeah?” I shoot back. “If you think you know him as well as you fucking think you do, you’re in for a goddamned surprise. ‘Cuz I don’t know if you noticed, but he’s got a fucking knack for fooling people.”

          “So you admit that he fooled you?” Ray asks. “Doesn’t the fact he fooled you piss you off?”

          I shrug. “A little bit, yeah.”

          Howie raises an eyebrow at me. He still hasn’t turned around to face the front, ‘cuz I’m pretty fucking sure he’s more interested in what I end up doing with the phone than any fucking thing else.

          “But I ain’t so fucking simple that the things that piss me off rule my whole goddamned life,” I say to the teacher. “I can be angry and impressed at the same fucking time. And,” I add. “I ain’t fucking mad at him.”

          “Then who are you mad at?”

          “You’re a fucking dumbass if you can’t figure that out.” And yeah, okay, the teacher looks like a biker gang leader, but Howie is sitting in front of me and I know for a fucking fact that Howie can protect me from this teacher if it comes down to it. I don’t think it will come down to that, of course, but I have no fucking doubt that Howie will protect me from violence he doesn’t cause me himself. ‘Les, of course, it’s violence I start at his behest.

          “Humor me.”

          “The only fucking person I ever get mad at when someone manages to fool me is myself. It don’t matter if they’re trying to fool me or not. If I get tricked, it’s my own goddamn fault. So no, I ain’t fucking angry at Howie, and I don’t feel betrayed by him. Now do you want me to make this phone call or not?”

          “Yeah. Make it.”

          I hit speed dial 5 on my phone and nothing happens, which makes Howie shake his head at me. “Jake, you have to put the code into the phone before you dial the number, or all you’re going to get is static.”

          “Oh. Didn’t know that. You know I freaking suck with technology crap.”

          “Yep. Try it again.”

          I put the eight digit code he gave me into the phone and stare at him. “Can I just hit my speed dial after I put the code in or do I have to do something weird to dial out?”

          “Nothing weird. Just put the code in and hit your speed dial or manually dial whatever number you’re trying to reach and it will connect.”

          “Okay.” I hit speed dial 5 again and this time it connects and I hear Jess’ familiar ring tone in my ear. She has the weirdest fucking taste in music of all the people I know, which, admittedly, isn’t a whole fucking lot of people. But her ring tone is set to Puff the Magic Dragon. Now, fuck, I know she deals the shit, but I will never fucking understand why she thinks she needs to announce it to the whole goddamned world via her ring tone.

          “Lo, Jake,” she says when she answers the phone. “Why didn’t you call me last night, you asshole?”

          I roll my eyes. “I got more shit to do than just talk to you on the phone, Jess.”

          “Oh yeah? Like what?”

          “Like hang out with people. I do have a fucking life you know.” The irony of that statement doesn’t elude me and I grin at Howie, who rolls his eyes at me.

          “Yeah, whatever. So tell me what the school is like.”

          “Well, the cafeteria is way too goddamned big and the halls are made of this weird marble that doesn’t make any fucking sound no matter how hard you stomp on it.”

          “Jake, I don’t want to hear about that shit. Tell me about the people.”

          “No fucking way. You’ll just find shit to make fun of.”

          She laughs. “You got me.”

          “What about you, Jess? What the fuck are you up to that you’re skipping school right now?”

          “I’m cutting a deal. Same reason I always skip school. Hell, why are you calling me right now? Aren’t you in class or something?”

          “I’m on a break,” I say, wincing at the lie. I got a good fucking reason to lie, but that don’t make it sit any fucking easier.

          “Shit,” she says. “My guy’s here. I’ll talk to you later.”

She hangs up before I have a chance to fucking respond, which is typical Jess behavior. I roll my eyes and turn to the teacher. “Do you fucking believe that Howie gave me access to my phone now?”

He eyes me thoughtfully. “You’re not a very normal person, Jake,” he says. Then his attention switches to Howie. “I’ve never heard of anyone calling you anything but Howard to your face and getting away with it.”

“Oh, Jake’s not getting away with it either,” Howie says, still facing me. He nods towards my bruised hand. “Give me your hand.”

Fuck. I really don’t want to put my hand anywhere near him right now, but I ain’t got no fucking choice. If I refuse, it’ll just be worse. Better to suck it up and get the shit over right now. I ain’t all that sure what it is he’s going to do to me, but I know it ain’t gonna be anything nice.

I take a deep breath and give him my left hand. I wish I could stop fucking shaking, but I got a fucking feeling I know what’s coming.

“Choose a finger, Jake,” Howie tells me and I close my eyes against the wave of sheer terror that threatens to consume me.

“Pinky,” I say. I fucking know that he’s about to break my goddamned finger and I can’t do shit about it. And I ain’t stupid. He’s proving a point to me right now. He’s fucking telling me that it don’t matter what reason I have for doing something if he’s fucking told me not to do it. And I get the fucking message; I don’t really need him to break my fucking finger in order to understand it. But I know him well enough to know that he won’t fucking accept me spewing words at him, ‘cuz he’s already fucking told me not to call him Howie in front of other assassins.

“Hmm.” He turns around, my hand still clutched tightly in his. “Gabriel, do you have your kit on you?”

“I always do,” Gabriel says, moving out of his seat to stand beside Howie’s desk. He pulls a small black tool-kit from his pocket, the kind thieves usually have, and unfolds it. I see miniature knives and hammers and clamps and fuck-I have to turn my eyes away so that I don’t get sick just thinking about how much some of that shit will hurt if Howie chooses to fucking use it on me.

“This will do nicely,” Howie says.

I force myself to watch Howie as he takes the tool he’s selected and places my finger in the middle of it. “What is that?” I ask, and of course my fucking voice shakes, because one of my bones is about to get broken and I ain’t got no fucking say in the matter.

“It’s a miniature thumbscrew,” Howie says. “It was designed to crush both thumbs of a person at the same time, in an excruciatingly slow manner.”

“H-how long will this take?” I ask. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m fucking terrified. I don’t want to be tortured. I don’t want my finger fucking broken. But I don’t see a way out of this.

“Since this is the first time you’ve broken one of the rules I gave you, I’ll be moving this crank.” He nods at the small crank at the top of the device. “As fast as I can, so that the pain you will feel isn’t as prolonged as I could make it.”

“T-thanks for that,” I say, and I’m not being sarcastic. I know I ain’t got a fucking way out of this shit, but at least I didn’t do anything fucking bad enough to warrant excruciatingly slow torture.

“Gabriel, Bree, I need the two of you to hold him down for me. He’s a fighter by nature and the pain I’m getting ready to cause him is going to make him lash out, even if he tries not to.”

Gabriel and Bree don’t comment. They just take up places meant to keep me from being able to fight when the pain starts. Gabriel pulls my free hand behind me and he raises it so far up my back I’m afraid he’s going to fucking break it, but he stops a few inches below that point. When he does that, though, he turns me to the side so that I’m facing the right side of the room and my left hand is the only thing that remains on the desk. He puts his weight solidly against my back, using his free hand to lock my neck and keep me from head-butting him.

For her part, Bree comes and stands in front of me. She frowns, like she’s trying to make a decision or something, then she sits on my lap so that her back is against my chest and wraps her legs around mine, so that my knees and thighs are fucking locked together. Holy fuck, this chick is strong.

But the fact that Howie has had to get two people to come fucking hold me down has me freaking the fuck out in my head. He might have said he was going to go fast with that thumbscrew thing, but that don’t mean it’s going to be like someone taking my finger and just snapping it.

I can’t fucking watch Howie put the device on my finger, but I feel the teeth of it start to dig in as he slides it onto my pinky. But that’s all that happens for a moment, though I do here the unmistakable sound of a belt being drawn. “Here,” Howie says. “Stick this in his mouth. I don’t want to take a risk and have him bite through his own tongue and bleed to death.”

          The next thing I know, Gabriel is forcing the belt into my mouth. I make the process easier by cooperating, because I don’t want to take the fucking risk of biting through my tongue and bleeding to death either.

          “Jake,” Howie says. “This is going to hurt like hell.”

          I shake with fear, as much as I’m able, considering I’ve got two fucking people acting as my restraints. I feel the pressure start to increase as Howie turns the crank—and the crank makes a squeaky noise that I’m fucking sure I’m going to have nightmares about—and at first, it’s just pressure. Pressure that increases to the point it feels the way it does when I accidentally slam doors and get my fingers caught in them.

          And that shit fucking hurts, but the pressure doesn’t stop increasing. I can feel the fucking teeth of the device grinding down into my bone, almost like it is fucking drilling into it, and I want to get the fuck away. I try, desperately, to buck Bree off of me and to push Gabriel away from me with my upper body. But it doesn’t fucking work. They are too goddamned strong. But I don’t stop trying, ‘cuz I won’t ever fucking give up.

          The pain keeps fucking getting worse and I fucking know I’m crying, because my vision is blurred by my own goddamn tears, but I can’t do shit about it. I feel the bone crunch under the pressure of the device and I fucking scream, because _the pressure doesn’t stop._ Howard keeps cranking the device and there is no goddamned pain in this world that fucking compares to having a finger broken like this and then _grinded_ down. I scream and I feel like I am never fucking going to be able to stop screaming and then the pressure is finally fucking gone. But the pain hasn’t fucking stopped and _oh my god, it hurts so fucking much_ that I can barely fucking take it.

          I ain’t never had a bone broken this before and it is the worst fucking thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. I’m sobbing openly and maybe it makes me look weak to the other fucking people in the room, but they didn’t just fucking sit here and get there finger fucking broken by a goddamned device designed for fucking torturing people.

          Gabriel and Bree don’t move, even though I stopped struggling to get away from them as soon as the device was removed. It takes me fifteen fucking minutes to be able to stop sobbing and for the pain to dull down to what a broken finger normally fucking feels like.

          “You can let him go now,” Howie says. The two of them move away from me, like being asked to hold someone down for Howie to torture is an everyday type of occurrence, and reclaim their seats. As I turn to face the front of the room again, instead of the side, Howie says to me, “Don’t break my rules, Jake. I told you what would happen last night if you couldn’t do what I said.”

          “I know,” I whisper, my voice hoarse from screaming. “I’ll do better.”

          “You’d better,” Howie says. He glances at my broken finger, but it’s a pretty significant look. “Next time it won’t be slow and I won’t stop with one finger. Are we clear?”

          “Yes, Howard,” I tell him. “We’re clear.”

          Ray stares at me in unfiltered shock from the front of the classroom. “Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me after he tortured you that you still don’t feel betrayed?”

          I keep the hand with my mutilated finger lying flat on my desk and glare at the teacher. “Why would I feel betrayed when he told me last night exactly what he would do if I went against what he told me I could do? So no, I don’t fucking feel like he betrayed me.”

          Ray turns his attention to Howard. “How the hell did you find this guy? I’ve never heard of a single scholarship student possessing the kind of loyalty that he shows you, even though you tortured him in front of everyone in this room.”

          Howard shrugs. “I picked the right middle school to attend,” he says.

          “Apparently so. But how in the world are you managing to keep him so loyal to you?”

          “If he’s loyal to me, then it’s of his own volition,” Howard says. “I might tell him what he can and can’t do when it comes to his actions, but his emotional integrity is his own. So what you are asking me is a question that only Jake can answer.”

          “Okay,” the teacher says. “Why are you so loyal to Howard, Jake?”

          “That’s none of your goddamned business,” I tell him. “All you need to fucking know is that I _am_ loyal to Howard. If I don’t even tell him those reasons, what fucking right do you have to them?”

          Before Ray can respond, the bell rings. Thank fuck. I’m glad this shit is over, ‘cuz I fucking swear if I have to listen to him ask me anymore goddamned stupid questions I’m going to end up doing something I’ll regret. Regret a lot, actually, because I know if I end up doing what I’m thinking of doing, Howie will break out more severe fucking torture tools to keep me in line. 


	10. chapter 25 part 1

Chapter Twenty-Five

 

          Right after the bell rings, the teacher walks out of the room, but I can tell he’s having a damn hard time making himself leave. It seems like he’s the kind of guy that really doesn’t like not getting the last word in. I guess that’s a trait we share, but too fucking bad for him, ‘cuz I got the last word in this round.

A new teacher walks in as Ray walks out and I’m willing to fucking bet that she’s the only reason Ray managed to pull himself away from the semi-fight he started with me. This new teacher is smoking hot but she’s got the same goddamned aura as the assassin students do, so I’m willing to fucking bet she’s an assassin, too.

She has straight red hair that falls down to the middle of her back and when she turns to face us, I get a glimpse of the most piercing green eyes I’ve ever seen in my life. She can’t weigh over a hundred twenty and she looks to be around five and a half feet tall. “Good morning,” she says. “My name is Karrie Lyle. If you address me as anything other than Mrs. Lyle or Professor, I will kill you.”

I’m getting so fucking used to death threats at this point that I’m starting to lose my fear of them. The threat of torture is a lot more fucking effective, as Howie’s already fucking proven.

          My finger is a mangled mass of pain, but I know it’s my own goddamned fault. Howie told me, explicitly, that calling him anything but Howard in front of other assassins was unacceptable. He didn’t explain why, of course, just told me that it was unacceptable.

I grimace; the pain might’ve diminished a little, but not by much. I ain’t fucking screaming, which is more than fine with me, but I ain’t fucking happy either. I’m just going to have to get better at watching my fucking mouth around Howie when we’re in public. Fuck it; I may as well start calling him Howard in private, too. That way I won’t make any more fucking mistakes like I did today.

“I’ll be teaching you Relevant History. Welcome to class number one.” She glances around the room and she focuses on the assassin sitting to the left of Howie. “Tony Cornell,” Professor Lyle says, then shifts her gaze to Howie. “Howard North.” Her gaze shifts again, settling on the assassin to Howie’s left. “Brandon Tanner.” She shakes her head, a small smile playing on her lips. “Who decided it was a good idea to throw the three of you together?”

I guess the question is fucking rhetorical, ‘cuz none of them answer it.

Professor Lyle shakes her head again. “Well,” she says, and this time she’s addressing the entire class. “The rest of you are in luck. It isn’t often I get to teach this class to the children of our world’s greatest legends.”

What the fuck is she talking about? Howie never mentioned any fucking thing like this. He never even hinted to me that he was the son of a legend. Of course, it makes sense he’s never said anything to me about it. I only found out he was an assassin yesterday. And he’s been too focused on the shit going on at this school to be giving me all the dirt about his family.

But hell. If Howie’s the child of a legendary assassin, then I sure as fucking hell want to know about it. And I want to know about his parents, even if I have to do it by taking this weird ass class. I’m tired of feeling like I’m being kept in the dark about this shit.

Professor Lyle looks at Tony. “Would you like to tell us the story about your dad?” she asks. “I’m sure you know more about it than the rest of us.”

“No,” Tony says, and he sounds very bored. Either he really is bored by the idea of talking about his dad or he knows the same manipulation techniques Howie does. Of course, it could easily be that he’s bored by the idea of talking about his dad. I mean, fuck, if my parents were legends and I knew all of the stories about them down to the last detail, I imagine it would get pretty fucking boring if I had to repeat those stories all the time.

“What about you, Howard?” Professor Lyle asks. “Are you willing to tell us the story about your parents?”

“I’m willing to, yes,” Howie says. Then he adds, “But I don’t really want to tell it myself.”

“Okay. What about you, Brandon? Will you tell us about your mom?”

“Sure,” Brandon says, like it’s absolutely no problem at all. Then he starts talking, and it’s all I can do to keep from fucking laughing. “When my mom isn’t killing people, she enjoys embroidery and long walks on the beach.”

I may be able to keep myself from laughing, but everyone else other than Howie and Tony start giggling.

Professor Lyle smiles tolerantly. “That’s enough,” she says, and her voice is sharp as a fucking whip. It makes me jump in my seat a little, and that motion jars my finger, which makes it really fucking hard for me not to scream at the sheer amount of pain it causes me to feel.

Everyone immediately stops laughing and they all look a bit guilty that they ended up laughing at all. I got to admit, I’m pretty impressed that this chick is able to gain and keep control of a room this fucking fast.

She walks to Brandon’s desk, though prowl may be a better fucking word, and stops right in front of him. She leans down so that she’s definitely violating his personal space and asks, in a quiet voice that fucking carries through the entire room (and how the fuck she does that, I got no fucking clue, but it seems like a handy fucking skill to have), “Do you think, Mister Tanner, that I will tolerate, for one moment, any rudeness in my classroom?” She pauses a second to let that sink in, and then she continues. “Do you think that you are exempt from the rules here simply because your mother is part of the council?”

I can’t see Brandon’s fucking face, since he’s sitting in front of me, but I can see the muscles in his neck as they tense. I don’t know anything about the guy yet, but I’m willing to fucking bet that he’s reached the realization that Professor Lyle isn’t someone to be trifled with.

“No, Professor Lyle,” he says. “What would you have me do to atone for my behavior?” The tone he’s using now screams respect, though there’s a little whisper of fear in there, too.

She leans back and smiles at him. It’s a cold smile that doesn’t reach her eyes, but I’m starting to think that smile is a fucking assassin trademark. “Tell the class the story about your mother,” she says.

“Very well,” Brandon says. “But I personally find it a boring tale.”

Gabriel turns in his seat and looks at Brandon. “You only find it boring because your mother and her friends keep reliving her glory days,” he says. “The rest of us find it fascinating. So stop being a tool and tell us the story already.”

Brandon completely ignores Gabriel and turns to Howie. “Rein your dog in before I draw a line in his throat.”

Howie stares at him thoughtfully for a second. “He’s right, Brandon,” he says. “You should tell us the story. I’m sure those of us who aren’t assassins will find it fascinating. As for Gabriel…” He turns to Gabriel, which means I can’t fucking see his expression anymore. “Don’t insult him again. Do you need a reminder of what happened the last time you decided to get mouthy?”

Gabriel drops eye contact in acquiescence in under fifteen seconds. “No, I don’t,” he says. He turns to Brandon. “I’m sorry for insulting you, Tanner.”

Brandon nods. “See that you don’t do it again.” He turns to Howie. “Why does it matter if the scholarship students hear these stories?” he asks. “They are going to be dead in four years. Knowledge of our history isn’t going to help them.”

“In case you’ve forgotten,” Howie says. “Some of us have partners whose project grades that will be added to our grades at the end of the year. Whether the scholarship students will be dead in four years or not isn’t really my main concern at the moment. I’m more interested in passing my freshman year.”

“Then why’d you tell your partner to take the classes?” Tony butts in, claiming the floor for himself for the first time.

“Because unlike you two, I believe it is possible for a scholarship student to make themselves valuable enough to cause us to invoke the asset clause. I chose to bring someone I think is capable of that to this school.”

Tony and Brandon exchanged looks with each other, but I doubt Howie missed that exchange. He rarely ever misses shit like that.

“You’re the exception, Howard,” Tony says, and there’s a tinge of bitterness to his voice that makes me think this is an old argument between the three of them. “Everyone knows you’re looking for a way to turn the program at this school into a haven for misfits.”

“That is not what I am looking to do, Tony, and you should know that better than anyone,” Howie says, and the tone he’s using is his super-calm one—the one that means he’s _really_ pissed off. “Do I need to spell it out for you again?”

“No,” Tony says, edging away from Howie. “I don’t need you to do that. But I would like to know what you think you’re going to accomplish with this crazy idea of yours.”

“I’m planning on proving that it is possible for us to train the right candidates to become our enforcers through this school. I think that Aifam Academy is equipped perfectly for that change. And,” he says, his tone growing a little lighter. “Just imagine what it would have been like for you if you’d gone into middle school searching for the perfect enforcer, instead of the perfect victim.”

Brandon glances at me and I shoot him a lazy grin, doing the best I can to keep the fucking pain I’m feeling from spilling out on my face. “That’s why your partner can take torture so well, isn’t it?” he asks. Despite my best intentions, I turn as white as a fucking sheet. I don’t handle torture well and if Howie gets it in his head that I do…damn, but I want to fuck Brandon up for letting those goddamn words come out of his mouth.

“I wouldn’t say he takes it well,” Howie says. “Rather, I’d say that the fact I chose him based on enforcer criteria is what allows him to accept the torture I inflict on him. While it seems like he has a very simple set of morals, they are in actuality quite complicated, and it’s his own set of principles that are guiding him. Even through all of this, while the other scholarship students are still trying to decide if trying to make a break for it will be worth the risk.” 


	11. chapter 25 part 2 - chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apparently decided while writing chapter 25 that I no longer needed chapter breaks.... So it goes on for quite awhile before I changed my mind and started using them again. Oops.

“As fascinating as your conversation is,” Professor Lyle interrupts, drawing everyone’s attention back to her. “This is still my classroom and I see no reason to let the three of you continue disrupting it.” She focuses on Brandon. “Either tell us the story about your mother, or leave.”

Brandon sighs, but he starts talking. “Fine,” he says. He gets up out of his seat and takes a spot at the front of the room, facing the rest of us. “My mother, Carolyn Tanner, is a legend because she managed to assassinate an entire dinner party when she was nineteen years old.”

No one says anything to him, so he continues. “She was invited to a dinner party by her client, who had paid her to assassinate all of his relatives. He gathered them together one night, at a dinner party, but he himself did not attend that party.”

“No one knows why that client wanted her to kill his entire family, but he paid her over six billion dollars to do it, so my mother didn’t refuse the job. His family ended up consisting of around three hundred people.”

Fuck. My eyes go wide when I hear those numbers. I mean, I figured a dinner party would be fucking enormous, but I never thought that it would be over fifty or so people. And who the hell has over three hundred living relatives? Just the sheer thought of that is fucking overwhelming. I can barely put up with the ten or so relatives I fucking know I have, cousins and aunts and shit included.

“It’s not really all that impressive, when you know how she managed to kill all of them,” Brandon says, addressing the ones of us who seem like we are in the most shock. Namely the scholarship students, of course, because the other assassins have already heard all of this before.

“She poisoned the water at the house the dinner party was held at, as well as the drinks and food that was served. My mother made sure that every last scrap of food and drink was swimming in syrup, so that there was no possibility of someone managing to escape from the party with their lives. But she also allowed for the possibility of someone who came to a dinner party like that one who would never eat or drink a thing.”

“The poison she used wasn’t a fast-acting poison. Instead, it wouldn’t kick in until an hour after a person had digested it. No one in the dinner party left early, because the party was thrown by an incredibly rich man and no one insults the rich by leaving early. My mom, however, prepared for that occurrence as well, and had a team of enforcers waiting outside.”

“Anyone who made it outside the party before the poison kicked in were knocked unconscious by the enforcers lying in wait for them. And anyone who didn’t eat or drink the food, my mother planned to kill with the daggers she keeps on her at all times.”

“But, as you all know, the daggers ended up being unnecessary. Every single person at that dinner party drank or ate something, and the poison did the job that it was meant to do. Only a handful of people tried to leave early, but the enforcers did their jobs and knocked them out. The poison in their system killed them, but the enforcers ensured that the bodies wouldn’t be found in random places the next day.”

Brandon finishes telling the story and goes back to his seat. I can’t help but fucking stare at him, because he sounded so _bored_ while he told it that it fucking amazes me. I mean, hell. His mother managed to kill three hundred goddamned people at one time? That’s not exactly something small and it ain’t something that he should be so goddamned blasé-fair about, neither.

But fuck. He’s given me a little bit of insight into what the fuck it means to be an enforcer for an assassin. He said that his mom’s enforcers lied in wait for the guests that wondered outside and knocked them out. In essence, her enforcers ensured that she wouldn’t be fucking caught. It kind of makes me sick, thinking about that, ‘cuz it means if I end up becoming Howie’s enforcer that I’m going to have to help him cover up the fact that he goes around fucking killing people.

Fuck. It means I may actually have to fucking watch as he kills people, and I’m not so fucking sure that I can stomach that. I mean, I ain’t got no issue with seeing blood or anything like that, but a life being taken right before my eyes? I ain’t ever had to deal with that shit. Especially knowing that I’m going to have to play a fucking accomplice in the murder, since I got no fucking choice but to become Howie’s enforcer if I want to stay alive myself.

I mean, I know that it’s my life versus the lives of the people he will be paid to kill and that I should value it against all of those. But it’s fucking hard to stomach. I mean, shit. How the fuck am I going to be able to tell myself every fucking day that my life is worth more than the thousands that Howie will end up killing?

Is it going to be enough that Howie fucking expects it of me? Am I going to be able to fucking accept that? I don’t fucking know, and not knowing that shit makes me really fucking anxious, ‘cuz I need to be able to be sure about this shit if I’m going to be able to do the shit Howie wants me to do.

“Thank you for sharing,” Professor Lyle says. She addresses the class. “Carolyn Tanner became a legend at age nineteen when she successfully assassinated a dinner party of three hundred. She received six billion dollars for the job she performed, and is considered one of the greatest assassins of our time. No one before or after her has managed to kill so many people at one time, though there have been attempts made to that affect.”

I am using that fucking skill that Howie brought up last night, so that every fucking word I hear today in this class is etched into my mind. I ain’t about to fucking forget anything I learn here, ‘cuz I ain’t about to risk failing these goddamned classes.

Even with my finger fucking screaming bloody murder at me, I ain’t risking failure. Not when the result of failing will be unimaginable torture. Howie’s the kind of person who likes to prolong pain, as my fucking finger can attest, and I’m fucking sure that he will choose torture over killing me as long as he fucking can. But I’m also fucking sure that if I fail these classes and keep him from progressing to sophomore year, that it won’t fucking matter to him whether I live or die anymore.

I got a feeling that if I fail these classes, the rest of the time I spend at this school will consist solely of him torturing me for as long as he fucking can every chance he gets. I won’t exist to him as a fucking person anymore; I’ll just become the guy he gets to torture until he needs to fucking kill me in order to graduate. And I definitely don’t want to become that fucking person to him. Maybe that sounds fucking stupid, but I don’t want to betray the trust he’s put in me.

And he has put his trust in me. I get that fucking much, ‘cuz there’s no goddamned way he would’ve given me an all-access code to my fucking cell phone if he didn’t trust me not to run. And I have always fucking believed in repaying the trust that someone shows me.

Granted, this is a really weird fucking world that I’m still trying to learn how to fucking navigate, but it doesn’t make it any less of a fact that Howie’s showed me more fucking trust than any fucking body else in my entire goddamned life.

My parents have always considered me a goddamned loser, which means that they’ve never fucking trusted me for anything. All I ever fucking was to them was a disappointment and their human scapegoat. I got blamed for fucking everything that went wrong at home, whether or not I had any fucking thing to do with it or not.

Ryan definitely didn’t trust me for shit, either, considering I scared the fucking shit out of him after he tried to beat me up. And the fucking reason he tried to beat me up was a ridiculous fucking reason, ‘cuz for some goddamned reason he got it into his head that I was trying to go after his girl. That’s obviously a lack of fucking trust right there.

And Jess sure as shit didn’t trust me. Granted, she doesn’t fucking trust anybody. She can’t really afford to, considering that she deals the hardest fucking drugs on the street. She never trusted me with any information she considered super fucking vital, like when she got the drugs she sells or who the fuck sold them to her.

I guess that shit ain’t really all that important, but the truth of the fucking matter is that she never trusted me with any sensitive information. Which means that she didn’t fucking trust me. Not the way Howie is showing me he trusts me.

And out of every fucking body I know, an assassin is the last fucking person I would expect to show me any goddamn trust. I mean, I’m a fucking fighter. I’ve never been good with authority and I tend to break rules when it suits my fucking purpose. But I don’t fucking say shit that I don’t mean, so maybe that’s why Howie thinks I’m trustworthy. It feels fucking weird to be trusted.

Don’t get me wrong though, I am starting to fucking love the fact that there is one goddamned person in this crazy ass world that will take me at face value, instead of trying to find ulterior motives for every fucking thing I do. I mean, I’m sure Howie still has doubts as to whether or not I’m going to fucking try and run, but he’s giving me the benefit of the fucking doubt.

No one has ever done that for me before. Ray Phillips asked me why I am so goddamned loyal to Howie, but the answer is pretty fucking simple, as far as I’m concerned. Howie may have brought me to this crazy ass school and shown me this fucking insane world, but he also did something no one else has ever fucking done for me. He fucking confided in me and he decided to trust me enough to let me have access to the outside world less than twenty-four hours after I fucking found out that he kills people.

And that is some heavy fucking shit. What he does is fucking dangerous. It’s a whole lot more sensitive than the shit Jess does by running drugs, ‘cuz if he gets caught when he’s out on a job, he’s likely to be killed on the fucking spot. Jess would just spend some time in jail.

Knowing that I’ll have to be Howie’s back-up to keep him from getting caught doesn’t make it any fucking easier for me to accept that I’m going to have to stand there and watch as he kills people. But it does make me feel a little bit of awe and maybe something that feels like pride, because there hasn’t been any fucking body in my life that has ever trusted me at their back. I got to admit, it feels pretty fucking fantastic.

“Okay,” Professor Lyle says. “Howard, will you tell us all the story about how your parents became the legends that they are today?”

Howard rises from his seat, like it was his fucking idea to tell the story all along, and turns to face the class. Unlike Brandon, he doesn’t sound fucking bored when he speaks about his parents. He sounds fucking proud, and that shit makes me feel even more respect towards the guy. Even if he’s heard these stories all his goddamned life, it’s nice to fucking know that he feels proud of his heritage.

And it makes me feel a little fucking jealous, because I ain’t got no fucking relatives or heritage to feel proud of. Everyone I left behind when I came to this school, minus Jess, of course, are all goddamned losers.

“My parents are Nate and Rebecca North. They are the ones who started the enforcer tradition, though they were both originally trained as assassins. Rebecca decided after she graduated from this school that she didn’t want to kill people unless she absolutely had to, because she couldn’t handle the fact that she had been responsible for killing her best friend.” He pauses, letting that sink in, and I watch most of the assassins shift uncomfortably in their seats.

“She was dating Nate at the time and she confided her distress over the situation in him. He is the one who suggested that instead of killing, he could take her with her on the jobs he took and she could be his lookout. By doing this, she could ensure that no one could escape, but all she’d have to do was knock them out.”

“They were eighteen years old when they started working as a team. Back then, it was unheard of for assassins to work in pairs. Assassins went on jobs by themselves and were responsible for covering up their own tracks. No one helped them do that. Any of the body trails they left were their responsibilities.”

“Because of that,” Howie says, waiting for his previous words to sink in to the rest of the class. “Assassins were getting caught far more often than they do now. They would miss a child who hid in a closet or one of their targets would escape and give their descriptions to the police. While a lot of assassins went on the run and were never caught, it made it incredibly difficult for them to get jobs.”

“As you know, any assassin who is considered “hot” is unable to get the high paying jobs, because there is too much risk of them getting caught by the police before they are able to carry out the job. And if they are caught, the job is compromised, and the targets may become aware that they have been targeted.”

“It is our job to make sure that we get to a target undetected and unsuspected, so that we can satisfy our clients with a minimal amount of fuss. But that wasn’t always possible when assassins were flying solo.”

“After Nate and Rebecca started taking jobs together, the rest of the assassin community caught on pretty quickly that they were doing something unheard of. Assassins did not interfere in each other’s contracts, but there they were, doing it anyway. They came under criticism from a lot of their peers back then, because the other assassins were afraid that my parents were going to start demanding double rates for the jobs they pulled since both of them were taking on the contract.”

“But my parents never demanded higher rates. They split the money for each contract they took between them and kept going on jobs together, despite the heavy criticism they were taking. And, before too long, the critics started to change their minds.”

“It became clear that while Nate and Rebecca were doing something unprecedented, their success rate was higher than every solo assassin in the field. They were taking on the hardest jobs and coming back without ever getting on the “hot” list. And even the best solo assassin at the time couldn’t manage to avoid the “hot” list every time he went on a job, especially when he went on a hard one.”

“Nate and Rebecca finally started being asked for advice, instead of criticized, and they explained to the rest of the community that they weren’t going on the job as two assassins. Instead, they were taking jobs as assassin and enforcer. One of them did the killing and the other made sure that neither of them got caught.”

“What this meant was that the two of them were able to take on harder jobs, because Rebecca was able to alert Nate in mere seconds when something seemed like it was going wrong. Since she was enforcing, she spent most of her time outside of the places Nate chose as the kill spots. That meant she could tell him in a heartbeat if there was any suspicious movement nearby, and if they suspected the police were getting onto them, they could flee.”

“It meant that sometimes jobs took longer than the recommended time frame, but they kept to the number rule our community lives by. They believed it was more important not to get caught than it was to kill their targets in a recommended time frame, because it would keep them free to take on more targets and make more money.”

“The other assassins started seeing the value in what they were doing and began, slowly at first, to copy them. And when it was proven that the assassin-enforcer model really did work, the community started training ex-cons they found on the streets as enforcers.”

“It’s been thirty years since they started that trend,” Howie says. “And today we have an assassin-enforcer blend in our community that none of us really appreciate, because we’ve grown up always knowing that we can rely on the enforcers around us to keep us safe.” His eyes meet mine for a brief second as he walks back to his seat and I can see a whirlwind of emotions going through them.

I don’t know what any of it fucking means, really, but I definitely have a deeper fucking appreciation for it what it means to be the enforcer of an assassin. It amazes me, though, that Howie’s parents managed to change the entire structure of their community through such a small act. I mean, it sounds to me like Nate was just offering his girlfriend a way to assuage the guilt she felt about killing her best friend by keeping her from having to kill anybody else.

And I’m starting to understand why he is wanting to change the curriculum at this school. If his mom couldn’t handle the guilt it caused her to the point that she sought an alternative to it by turning to her boyfriend, then it stands to reason that Howie is made of the same material. Except, of course, that he has the qualities of both of his parents. So he’s got the killer instinct of his father, along with the willingness and ability to torture and kill those who get in his way. But that’s tempered by the more humane aspect of his mother, who needed an alternative to killing that would allow her to live with herself.

It’s no fucking wonder to me that he doesn’t want to go through the same shit his mother went through during her four years at this school. He probably is worried that he will not be able to shoulder the guilt and the responsibility that comes with taking the lives of others, even if he is getting paid to do it. Hell, maybe even because he’s getting paid to do it.

I don’t fucking know if I would be able to handle growing up in an environment like this one, surrounded by assassins on every side. My parents were mean, yeah, but they aren’t fucking killers. Granted, I guess Howie’s mother isn’t a killer either, but she’s still married to one. And she enables him.

Fuck. So at least now I have an answer to what an enforcer actually fucking does for an assassin. I mean, at least “make sure your assassin partner doesn’t get caught killing someone” is a lot less fucking convoluted and messed up than “help your assassin partner when they are killing people,” which is what I was starting to fucking think it meant I had to do.

But hell. I don’t fucking know. I get that Howie’s mom, Rebecca, stood watch for Nate, Howie’s dad, while he was doing jobs and shit. And I can respect that, to a point, ‘cuz the two of them managed to change an entire fucking community on the strength of their own characters. But the hard thing I’m having trouble getting my head around is this: both of them were raised in this world. Both of them started out as assassins.

Yeah, okay, Rebecca decided that the life of an assassin wasn’t the life she wanted to live and all, but that doesn’t eliminate the fact that she was trained from birth to be one. So she was never exposed to the types of shit that the rest of us go through, like morals and ethics and being taught what is right and wrong and shit.

Instead, she just decided that she didn’t want to deal with the fucking guilt she felt over killing her own goddamned best friend, despite the fact that her best friend’s murder was sanctioned by her own community. In a way, she was her own type of rebel, because she managed to find a path that wasn’t the one of an assassin that she could walk and still be accepted by the people around her.

I get that it wasn’t fucking easy for her to do that and all, since she had to deal with a lot of criticism from the people around her about it. But it don’t fucking change the fact that they eventually came around to her way of thinking. And it doesn’t change the fact that she ended up starting a new way of life for the community as a whole.

I mean, everything Howie’s just fucking told the class about his parents is more information than I’ve ever heard from him about them in the three fucking years that I’ve known him. The only thing he ever said to me before when I asked about his parents was that they were busy working, and he always managed to find a way to elude me when I asked what they were working on.

I see why, now, of course, because who in the fuck is going to tell someone unaware of the assassin world that their parents are assassins? That’s a great way to alienate potential friends, not to mention a good way to get social services called to investigate. If Howie ever dropped a hint about being an assassin in the last three years, I never fucking noticed, but if I had, I probably would have kept my fucking distance. I mean, shit. Who the fuck wouldn’t? That just sounds insane.

But, obviously, it’s the fucking truth. Being at this goddamned school is proof enough of that for me. And now that I know a little bit more about his goddamned family, I feel like I’m starting to understand Howie a little bit better too. Because now I understand why he’s so adamant about changing the current curriculum so that the enforcer program supplants the “kill your best friend” program that is currently in place.

But hell. I ain’t so sure about the torture part. I mean, I don’t know a whole fucking lot, but are enforcers usually tortured by the people they support? I’m guessing not. So my guess is that Howie’s willingness and ability to torture me doesn’t have any fucking thing to do with the fact that he considers me his best friend or that he wants me to be his goddamned enforcer.

No, I’m guessing that the fucking torture is his way to prove to me that he holds the power. Like I didn’t already fucking know that. But I also think it’s a way for him to show me that he doesn’t trust me fully yet, not even after giving me full access to my goddamn phone. And that kind of stings a bit. Okay, I’m lying. That stings a whole fucking lot.

Because I can be trusted. With this, I can definitely be trusted. I just wish I knew a way to get that message to Howie, but I can’t think of a way that doesn’t sound fucking trite. And I ain’t going to just fucking tell him that he should trust me, because no one is going to give anyone their fucking trust just on the strength of a few words. Not unless they’ve known the truth about one another for fucking years.

And me and Howie, well, we don’t have that kind of bond yet. ‘Cuz while I may have known him for three years, I haven’t actually known him at all except for the last twenty-four hours. And I mean, I’m still trying to fucking wrap my around all this shit, but it’s getting a lot easier.

I mean, it’s pretty fucking hard not to accept the shit that’s staring me in the fucking face. School for assassins? Check. My best friend as one of those assassins? Check. My best friend as an assassin that is willing to torture me in order to prove his points? Check. Weird ass classes that don’t make any fucking sense to me because I don’t know anything about this weird ass world? Check.

So yeah. It’s pretty fucking hard to ignore all that. But at least now I know that Howie wants me to be his enforcer legitimately, instead of just thinking he would say anything to get me to believe him. I mean, I’m guessing the guy is used to having his word doubted. He’s an assassin for fuck’s sake. I’m sure that means he has to spend a whole lot of time lying to people, in order to keep his cover as an assassin from being blown.

So it’s no fucking wonder that he doesn’t fully trust me yet. But he trusts me enough. Not enough to keep from torturing me, obviously. My fucking finger is proof of that. But enough to let me sit at his back in a room full of people who could end my fucking life as easily as he could. And enough to let me talk to the people outside of this school.

That says a whole fucking lot more about the trust he places in me than anyone else has ever said. And yeah, it’s going to make me question my fucking morals to become his goddamned enforcer. Because I don’t fucking know how well I’m going to handle lying in wait for some bastard to come out of a house, just so that I can knock them out cold in order for Howie to finish them off.

I guess it fucking depends on the type of targets that Howie ends up getting when he starts taking jobs. As long as I can find a way to fucking justify it to myself, I’ll be fine. So the targets he takes better be people I can fucking find a way to tell myself deserve to die. That shit is going to be hard, though, and I don’t even fucking know if Howie has taken that shit into consideration, because it’s going to present a large fucking barrier for us to have to work around.

But maybe there are always those fucking barriers when it comes to an assassin working with an enforcer. Fuck if I know. For all I know, every enforcer in the community may have a set of guidelines that he requires the assassin he works with to follow before he’ll agree to become the enforcer for that assassin.

Huh. Well fuck. That, at least, is a good idea. I don’t know shit about the other enforcers in this community, but I got a fucking feeling that I’ve got the right to set my own terms with Howie, even if he doesn’t fucking trust me completely just yet.

He may not fucking like it, ‘cuz he’s such a goddamned control freak, but I am not willing to enforce for him if we’re going to be going after weak ass targets. That’s part of my code, in case you’ve forgotten. No matter what, I don’t pick on the weak.

And enforcing for Howie if he chooses a weak ass target to go after would break my code. I don’t think I can make myself break that part of my code for anyone, not even for him. Because fuck, if someone is that goddamned weak, then they really don’t deserve to die. They need every fucking chance they can get to try and make something of their lives, because they are going to have the hardest fucking time of anybody else.

But now, at least, I’ve learned a little fucking something about the world I live in now. I got a feeling that as soon as you step through the door from the normal world to the world of assassination and intrigue and shit like this that it’s not possible to cross back over. And hell. Who the fuck would want to go back?

It’s not like my life before this was interesting. It was just a whole lot of fucking fighting with my parents and seeking out fistfights in order to find a little fucking stress relief. There was no purpose to my life. I had no reason to have a fucking purpose, because no one expected me to be able to do fucking anything with my life.

But now…well, now I got the choice. I can join Howie’s cause and immerse myself in this weird world of assassination and potentially do something to make myself useful. I could, if I put my fucking mind to it, actually be someone in this world. And that’s not something I could have fucking done in the other world.

No one was ever going to recognize my talent there. I was always too mean, too loud, and too disruptive for anyone to find anything I said or did useful. I was a waste of fucking space back there.

And yeah. Okay. So it’s been one goddamned day. But a lot can fucking happen in a day. And considering I’ve learned that there’s something that I can finally fucking do that will make me fucking useful to someone makes me think that this is the world I was meant to be in.

Sure, it’s a little messed up. Okay, it’s a lot messed up. I ain’t so sure I’m going to get comfortable with the killer aspect of it very fast, but I can try my fucking best to. I want to be able to be comfortable in this world, because it’s the only fucking world that’s shown any inclination of accepting me at all.

And I ain’t got no interest in going through the rest of my life with nothing to fucking show for myself. I don’t want to end up one of those people bitter about their lives because they ended up spending all their time alone, ‘cuz no one could fucking understand them well enough to even befriend them.

Fuck. I want to make friends here. I want to know what it’s like to belong. Does it really fucking matter if the world that I end up belonging to is a world full of assassins? I mean, fuck. Not everyone gets to find a niche that fits them at all, so if I have a fucking shot at this being the niche that fits me, I feel like I got to fucking take a chance and do the best I can to fit in with this crowd.

Not because I think that what they are doing is morally correct, of course, because I don’t think anyone besides those who grow up in this world can say that assassination is a morally correct world to be a part of. Nor do I think that it is going to be possible for me to kill someone with my own two hands. I mean, that might fucking change over the next few years, but I ain’t got no fucking way of knowing that. Right now, I know that I don’t want to take anyone’s goddamned life.

But my morals, besides my code of honor, have always been flexible. And I think that, in order to fit into this world, it’s a good thing that they are flexible. Because I know that I will be able to enforce for Howie as long as I am able to find a way to justify him killing a particular target in my own mind.

If he only takes contracts that are out on people like rapists, kidnappers, and abusive scum…well, those are people I can all justify as deserving to fucking die. But those are the only kinds. I don’t know if he will be willing to fucking work with me on that shit, but I’m planning on fucking asking him the next chance I get. Because if I’m really going to do this, then I’m going to make him meet me halfway. I got to have some terms of my own, dammit, or he’s going to end up pushing me around forever.

And yeah. I get that he can torture me. And fuck, bringing this shit up to him might make him decide that he didn’t torture me enough today by breaking my goddamn finger with that miniature thumbscrew that Gabriel apparently carries around with him. Why the guy carries that torture kit around with him is too creepy to contemplate, but I got a feeling that Howie probably has his own mini torture kit laying somewhere around our room.

And that is not a fucking comforting thought, because shit. Knowing that he can break out torture tools whenever the fuck he feels like is pretty fucking scary. But it’s also starting to dawn on me that I can get him to fucking stop torturing me if I can convince him that he can trust me.

I got to get him to stop treating me like I’m his goddamned enemy and get him to fucking realize that I’m the best fucking ally he is. If I can do that, I’m pretty sure I can get the fucking torture bullshit nicked in the bud. And if I am able to get that shit abolished, then I’m going to have a whole hell of a lot easier time fucking doing the shit he wants me to do and getting the goddamn people he wants on his side actually on his side.

But if he keeps doing shit like today, where he tortures me in front of the other scholarship students, then he’s going to find out pretty fucking fast that the scholarship students he wants to recruit to his side are going to flee to the Cornell and Tanner factions, even if it means death for them in the long run.

‘Cuz, the weird thing about people is that we like to live without pain. So if that means we have to die in order to keep from being tortured, the majority of us will take the fucking death route. At least that way we get to have clean deaths.

Granted, I’m not in that majority, which should be pretty fucking obvious, considering the fact I just let Howie torture me and I’m still feeling pretty fucking loyal to the guy.

But I’m a pretty complicated person and most of the fucking people I know who aren’t me are pretty goddamned simple. So it comes down a black and white question of “quick death” versus “prolonged torture but living.” I know which road I’d chose, because I’ve already fucking chosen it, but I got a fucking feeling that the majority of people would choose death over torture in a goddamned heartbeat.

I kind of want to get Howie out of the classroom right now so I can talk to him about all this shit that has popped into my fucking head, but I ain’t stupid enough to try and interrupt this teacher’s class. Professor Lyle is not someone I want to fucking trifle with, and, luckily, Howie didn’t tell me I had to fuck with her at all the way he suggested I fuck with the homeroom teacher.

I mean, I’m guessing he fucking knows who all the teachers of these classes are already. I could be wrong, but I am of the strong opinion that there are only a handful of people who are going to be willing to teach the children of assassins who are themselves also assassins. And I’m willing to bet that a lot of the teachers are assassins themselves, ‘cuz anyone normal wouldn’t want to take the risk of dying if they said the wrong fucking thing to the wrong fucking person.

Granted, Ray is a bit of a goddamned mystery, ‘cuz there’s no fucking doubt in my mind that he’s any sort of an assassin at all. ‘Cuz he was fucking terrified of Howie. So my bet is that he’s either an enforcer or some weird ass person who managed to stumble into this world and decided to stick around. I’m definitely leaning more towards the former than the latter, though, ‘cuz I can’t think of too many people off the top of my head who are fucking crazy enough to walk into a school full of assassins and be like, “Hey, I want to stick around and teach these people.”

But hell, there are a lot of fucking crazy people in the world. For all I know, maybe he’s got a weird fucking fetish about teaching killers. That’s not really any of my business, and I don’t really care all that much. All I know for fucking sure is that I ain’t got no fucking interest in him. He’s so fucking pathetic. Like, I can’t even begin to express how much I fucking dislike the guy.

He dresses like a goddamned biker, but he doesn’t fucking act like a biker. And he sure as hell doesn’t act like the biking leader that he dresses as. It annoys the fuck out of me when people try to dress the way they think they should be instead of just fucking dressing the way they already are.

I mean, shit. Look at Talon. She dresses in a fairly skimpy way, considering every time I have seen her so far she has been wearing a fucking mini skirt and a fucking tube top. Yeah, okay, so she says she wants to be a mechanic. And maybe she already is. But she doesn’t fucking dress like a mechanic, because it doesn’t fucking define her.

That’s what I mean. I don’t fucking dress the way I dress because I want to come across looking like a mean asshole, even though that’s what ends up happening because of my fucking clothing choice.

No, I dress in black clothing like this because it suits my fucking temperament. I am a fucking asshole that likes to fight and loves the color black. I also like red, and would actually fucking prefer to dress in all red, but I had enough fucking issues back home that doing that would have just pissed my parents off more.

Hell, maybe now that I’m here, I can get a new fucking wardrobe that will suit me. I mean, the assassins here are all filthy fucking rich, so I’m sure if I can convince Howie that it’s a goddamned necessity that I have all red clothes that he will be more than willing to drop some chump change on a wardrobe for me.

It’s kind of weird, to be sitting here thinking of a thousand dollars or two as chump change, since before I stepped foot into this school the most I ever had on me at one time was fifty dollars. Now fifty dollars feels like it would be laughed right out of this fucking school. Here, fifty dollar bills are like goddamned pennies. It’s fucking weird, trying to get use to the ridiculous amount of luxury that surrounds me.

But I ain’t complaining. I got to admit, I like the feeling of being surrounded by money. I’m hoping that I am going to become one of those people who spends ridiculous amounts of money on the most ridiculous and frivolous things that you can think of. I want to become that kind of guy. I’ve always wanted to be goddamned rich and Howie has given me that opportunity by bringing me to this school.

Professor Lyle starts speaking again, so I have to pay attention to her instead of my own fucking thoughts, which kind of annoys me, but I don’t want to piss her off, either. “Thank you, Howard, for sharing that with us. As you can see,” she says, once more addressing the entire class. “Nate and Rebecca North are legends in the assassin community because they were able to develop a new way of living that allowed more freedom for assassins. They developed the assassin and enforcer program that all of you will enter after high school, if you make it out with your lives, of course. I will go over the basics of that program with you during another class, because it is going to be incredibly important that you understand exactly what you will be getting into if you choose to walk that path.”

“Now,” she says. “So far, we’ve covered two of the assassin legends. Carolyn Tanner, Brandon’s mother, managed to kill three hundred people at one time. Nate and Rebecca North established the working partnerships we now form with enforcers after graduating from this school. The third, though his accomplishment was smaller, is still considered a legend in his own right.” She turns to Tony Cornell. “Tony,” she says. “Please tell the rest of the class what your father did that turned him into a legend.”

Tony sighs and gets out of his seat and he drags his feet all the way to the front of the classroom. It’s pretty fucking obvious that he doesn’t want to do this shit, but he doesn’t seem bored the way Brandon did. He just seems annoyed. Fuck, maybe his family life sucks or something, and he doesn’t have any interest in rehashing the shit his father did.

Or, hell. Maybe he even fucking hates his dad for a reason I can’t understand yet. Maybe he is feeling the pressure of living under the shadow of having a great man as a father.

Granted, it would make sense if that were the case, but the other two don’t seem to be all that affected by it. Brandon certainly didn’t seem to give a shit about having a famous mother, considering how bored he was when he gave that speech.

And Howie…well, Howie’s a different breed of person. He is obviously following in his parents’ footsteps, but he doesn’t seem to feel like he is walking in their shadow or anything to that affect. It’s more like he’s doing his own shit, and if it happens to contribute to the North family legacy, then that’s fucking fine with him.

And suddenly, it makes sense to me. Out of the three of them, Howie’s the only fucking one of them that sees the legend of his parents as a family tradition. Like a fucking heirloom to be passed down and a journey to be embarked upon by the succeeding generations. He’s the only one who seems to want to make a fucking difference for his family, instead of just his own fucking self.

And I really fucking respect that. So much that I’m pretty sure that any fucking doubts I had about following Howie have completely fucking disappeared, not that there were a whole fucking lot of doubts left. I mean, hell. I wanted to make my family proud of me for so fucking long that it physically makes me ill sometimes to think about how I never managed to accomplish that.

But I didn’t want to fucking make them proud for my own sake. I wanted to fucking add to the image of our family. I wanted to give our fucking family some kind of reputation that wasn’t the image of “the poor fucking family that takes pride in their poverty,” which was the way my parents wanted to portray us.

I think that’s what made me so fucking angry with them all the time. Because I wanted to make us out to be a reputable family, but I couldn’t fucking do it because they didn’t want to be seen as being reputable. They just wanted me to get good grades and play sports and do every fucking thing that Ryan did. They didn’t want me to be my own goddamn person.

And I did every fucking thing I could until I was eight years old to try and live up to their fucking expectations of me. It wasn’t until I realized how much my family fucking hated me that I really stopped fucking trying to make them proud. But trying to make people proud who don’t give a shit about whether you succeed or fail in life is fucking pointless. That’s the only fucking thing that they managed to teach me about life.

At least Howie thinks I can fucking do something. My family never let me try to prove that shit to them. They just assumed I would always be a goddamned failure, so they never once tried to see me as anything else.

But Howie, man, he has parents he’s proud of and who are proud of him. And that makes all the goddamned difference in the world. He is able to feel confident in himself and in his plans, because he’s always had the strongest support anyone can ever fucking have—he has the support of his family.

But Tony and Brandon don’t care about the legends their parents have left for them to inherit. Brandon made it obvious through his boredom when he told the class the story about his mother and her ability to kill three hundred people at one dinner party when she was nineteen years old.

And that is really fucking impressive. But instead of acting like he’s proud of his mom for being able to do something that incredible, Brandon acted like it was the most uninteresting thing in the world. So it doesn’t look like he has any fucking pride in his family. It doesn’t look like he wants to add anything to the family name. It just seems like he wants people to stop associating him with his mother.

And I guess I can kind of get that, because it can be pretty fucking hard trying to live up to the shadow of another fucking person. I mean, I went through that shit with Ryan. Nothing I did ever measured up to the shit my brother managed to accomplish. But my teachers in middle school never held me up to the standard my brother had set. It was only ever my parents who did that.

With Brandon, I guess it’s different. Because he’s got to live under the shadow of his mother for the rest of his life, unless he can surpass her somehow. And I’m guessing it’s going to be really fucking hard for him to surpass her, because what she did was goddamned incredible. A little disturbing, yes, but that doesn’t make it any fucking less incredible.

          And Tony, well, it seems like he can’t fucking stand being forced to talk about his dad. I don’t know what goes down between them, since I don’t fucking know the guy, but I know what anger towards a parent fucking looks like. It’s almost like looking in a goddamned mirror.

I don’t know his story, and I’m not sure I want to know it, considering Howie told me I should keep my fucking distance from Cornell. And I’m pretty sure I want to keep my distance from this guy anyway, because he just seems fucking pissed off. Like, he seems both pissed off and disinterested, which isn’t a look that I can personally pull off. I’m just pissed all the time. But I ain’t disinterested in shit, because I’m fucking curious as hell about the world that I’ve managed to find myself pulled into.

Cornell sighs again and starts fucking talking. “My dad is Andrew Cornell. As most of you are aware, he is the assassin who managed to get an entire airport grounded in order to find his target. He is the only assassin who has ever managed to successfully pose as a federal agent in order to find his target. He used the cover of arresting his target in order to get the airport grounded and managed to get the guy to a private area, where he then preceded to kill him. Any of you have any questions?”

No one says anything. Of course we fucking don’t. The other assassins already know this goddamned story, because Andrew Cornell is one of their fucking legends. They don’t need to ask any goddamned questions about ancient history.

And the rest of us, the scholarship students, we aren’t going to press our luck with this fucker. While he may have managed to deliver the words in a pretty bored fucking tone, his entire body screamed aggression at us while he was fucking talking.

If anyone asks him any fucking questions right now, there’s no goddamned doubt in my mind that he’s going to fucking kill someone. And I, for one, am not fucking interested in dying on my very first day of school.

Tony takes his seat when no one raises their hand, and Professor Lyle resumes the lesson. “All right,” she says. “So along with Howard’s parents and Brandon’s mother, Tony’s father, Andrew Cornell, are the legends of our community. If you’d like to think of them as superhuman, that will suit me just fine, because you’re going to find out pretty quickly that the things that they managed to do are impossible for you.”

She makes it pretty fucking obvious that she’s addressing only the assassins at this point in time, because there’s no fucking way that the scholarship students, myself included, have any goddamned interest in trying to replicate the shit that those people have done in the past.

I mean, okay, I got to fucking admit, it’s pretty fucking cool that Tony’s father managed to get an entire airport grounded going after a single person, and that he managed to successfully pose as a federal agent. But it’s also slightly fucking terrifying, because that means that there could be other assassins out there trying to fucking pose as cops and no one will be the fucking wiser.

And I mean, I guess that’s the fucking point of assassination. You don’t want anyone to know that you are coming to kill them, so you do everything in your power to make sure it doesn’t fucking happen. You make sure that they don’t fucking find out.

I don’t know if Tony’s father had an enforcer with him or not, but I’m guessing he probably didn’t. ‘Cuz if his father is anything like this bastard, there’s no fucking way that the guy would work with anyone. I mean, shit, I can fucking tell that the last fucking place Tony wants to be is inside this fucking classroom listening to stories he already fucking knows.

Hell, I don’t know if I even fucking blame him. I used to fucking hate going to classes in middle school because I already fucking knew all the answers to the shit that they asked and I already knew all the content they were teaching me.

So why were my grades mediocre? Because I didn’t fucking give a shit about making sure they were good and I needed to fucking prove to my parents that I wasn’t going to let them treat me like a stand-in for Ryan. No matter fucking what, I was going to be my own goddamned person, whether they liked it or not.

So yeah, I may have slacked on the fucking tests that they gave, despite knowing all the goddamned answers, just to prove a fucking point. So what? I’m a little fucking spiteful. With all the shit I’ve been through, I think I have a fucking right to be that way though.

“Now,” Professor Lyle says. “I’m not going to go over a whole lot with you during this first class, because I know that for a lot of you, this is completely new information. But I am going to go over the basics.”

“There are a lot of misconceptions about what assassins do,” she says. “And I don’t mean the part about how we kill people, because that part’s obvious, considering it’s in the very name of the label we give to ourselves. No, what I mean is that we don’t accept just any contract.”

Hearing that makes me sit straight the fuck up in my seat, because this is the shit that I’ve been wondering about for the last little bit. I want to fucking know how they choose their targets and how they decide which contracts to take. I want to fucking know that the people they choose to kill fucking deserve to die, but I’m pretty fucking sure that I’m not going to hear those words coming out of her mouth, no matter how much I fucking wish that it were the case.

“The first rule of being an assassin is simple,” Professor Lyle says. “Don’t get caught. It’s the most important rule that you will live by for the rest of your lives, because if you get caught, you will become blacklisted and it will take a lot of effort for you to be able to get your name off of that list.”

“And if you get caught at the worst possible time for you to get caught—namely, when you are delivering the final blow—you will be arrested and sent to jail. That doesn’t mean, of course, that you will be stuck in jail. As most of you are aware, we have an inside team at nearly every jail in the country that will smuggle our people out of the system.”

“But,” she says, and there’s a note of caution in her voice. “If you get caught too many times, even our inside teams won’t be able to smuggle you out, because doing so will raise their risk of getting caught. When it comes down to it, the people in those jails on our inside teams are more valuable to the community than a lone assassin. We will, in such a situation, leave you to rot.”

“The number of times it will take before you are left to rot in jail depends on each person. Some people have been caught over a hundred times and are still valuable enough to be smuggled out. These are the assassins that never get caught in the same place twice, so that there is never any connection between them and any particular jail. What this means for you, of course, is that is important that you move around constantly when you start taking jobs.”

“The more mobile you are, the less likely it is that you will be caught. And the less you are caught, the more valuable you will become to the community, and the more valuable you are to the community, the more high-paying contracts you will be asked to undertake.”

“That being said, the contracts you take are unique to each assassin. Some assassins will only take contracts to kill men who cheat on their wives. Others will only take contracts to kill women who whore themselves out on a regular basis.” I see Alan wince at that; no doubt he’s considering his mother when that gets mentioned, considering she’s a fucking prostitute herself.

“Others, like me,” Professor Lyle says. “Will take any contract as long as the pay is high enough. Some of us do not have any particular rules about who we will and will not kill. Some of us do. It is up to you to figure out the type of assassin you are.”

She focuses her attention on the class, but her eyes narrow on me. “You there,” she says. “What’s your name?”

“My name is Jake, Professor,” I tell her. I don’t fucking hesitate in answering her, and I don’t let no fucking disrespect into my tone. I ain’t about to fucking mess with this chick, no matter what she fucking says to me.

“I see that you are being allowed to sit at Howard North’s back. Does that mean that you’ve decided to try and become his enforcer by the time you leave this school?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I say. I don’t elaborate, because I don’t think it’s fucking necessary. Besides that, I think that if I try to elaborate on shit with this teacher that she’s going to get really fucking annoyed with me really fucking fast.

“Are you aware of exactly what that entails?” she asks.

“Not really,” I answer, being honest.

“Well then,” she says, and looks around the rest of the room. “I see there are a few of you who have decided to try and become an enforcer for the assassin that brought you to this school. It’s a hard path to walk and very few people have managed to succeed. I hope you guys are able to succeed where so many others have failed.”

“But in order to succeed, you need to know a few things about what an enforcer does and what they are responsible for. The first thing you will be tasked with as an enforcer is keeping your assassin safe. That means that you have to ensure that they won’t be caught, even if you have to scapegoat yourself in order to allow them to escape.”   
          “That means if an assassin is about to be apprehended by the police, you are the ones who have to throw them off the trail. It means you have to convince the cops that you’re the killer that they’re looking for, and it means you have to take the fall. It means,” she says. “That you will end up in jail.”

“The only difference is that an assassin is guaranteed to have the inside team in the jails smuggle them out. But if an enforcer gets caught, then the assassin who he’s partnered with has to make that call. That means, for example, if you go to jail for Howard, Jake, that he will decide whether or not you are worth being smuggled out of jail.”

“If you prove yourself to be a worthy enforcer, of course, any assassin will get you released. But if you prove that you are incapable of living up to their expectations, the assassin will leave you there to rot. Are you prepared for that to happen to you?” She turns her gaze on me again. “Jake?”

“No, Professor,” I tell her. “I’m not prepared to be stuck in jail for the rest of my life.”

“Oh?” She raises an eyebrow at me. “And how do you plan to prevent that from happening?”

I smile at her, ignoring the pain in my finger so that I can give her a decent answer. “By becoming an enforcer that Howard won’t feel like he can live without, of course.”

She smiles back at me, and I feel like I’ve managed to survive this fucking class. But fuck, for a second there, the tension in the room was so goddamned thick that I was afraid that I had said the wrong damn thing.

“That’s a good plan,” Professor Lyle says. “But you don’t even know what an enforcer is or what you’re supposed to do. All you know right now is that you have to take the fall for him if he gets caught if you are unable to prevent him from being caught completely. So how do you plan to turn yourself into the enforcer he can’t live without?”

“I’m planning on learning everything I can possibly learn here at this school, Professor,” I tell her. “Cuz I got every intention of the world of being Howard’s enforcer. And I got a feeling I’m going to need every scrap of information these classes that are taught here are going to teach me. So my plan is to pay attention to you and learn what I can.”

“Is learning going to be enough?” she asks. “What about fighting? Are you able to fight against another assassin if one gets it into their head that Howard is a target they should go after? Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I’m pretty sure that none of you scholarship students have the fighting skills to take even the weakest assassin on right now.”

“No, Ma’am,” I tell her. “As I am right now, I can’t take on an assassin. But I know that and I’m planning on finding a way to correct that.”

She raises an eyebrow at me. “And how are you planning on doing that? Last time I checked, assassins didn’t give out free fighting lessons.”

Howard speaks up to answer her before I get the chance to say anything. “Professor Lyle, I’m going to teach my enforcer how to fight. It is one of the terms he set in order to give me his support, and I plan to honor that agreement.”

“I see,” Professor Lyle says. “Well then, you’ve got a pretty solid start in the right direction, Jake. Being able to protect your assassin from other assassins is a standard responsibility of an enforcer, as is keeping them from being caught by the police during jobs.”

“There are only a few more requirements for a person who becomes an enforcer. The first of those is clean-up. What that means is that you will be responsible for disposing of bodies and getting rid of evidence after every kill that your assassin makes. No matter how uncomfortable you are with that aspect of it, it is part and parcel of being an enforcer.”

“You are, as an enforcer, the bodyguard, the look-out, and the clean-up crew all rolled into one for the assassin that you end up partnered with. Usually,” she says. “An assassin will choose an enforcer from the program that all graduates from Aifam Academy are required to enter within a year after graduation. But there have been a few exceptional cases where an assassin has chosen an enforcer while here at this school.”

“I’m sure that Raymond Phillips told you that only three people have ever passed these classes who weren’t themselves assassins. But he didn’t tell you that there have been about a dozen scholarship students who have graduated from Aifam to become enforcers. None of them enrolled in the classes here. Instead, they spent all their time in the school library learning as much as they could about enforcing.”

“And all of them,” Professor Lyle tells us. “Are still working in the community as enforcers. They are, in fact, some of the best enforcers in the business. And no one, not even the assassins who used to degrade and bully them whenever they were in school here, will say a word against them now.”

“So it is possible to do,” she says. “But it’s not an easy path to walk, by any means. That any of you are willing to even consider doing so is impressive in and off itself, and if anyone tries to tell you that it’s not, then they are fucking morons.”

I stare at her. I’m feeling completely fucking flabbergasted, because the shit that she just told us doesn’t mesh at fucking all with the shit that asshole Raymond told us.

So there have been successful graduations of scholarship students from this place in the past. That makes me feel pretty fucking good about myself, because it means my chances aren’t fucking zero the way that asshole teacher started to make me feel.

Not that I was going to let that shit get me down anyway, because I am more than fucking used to fighting against what seem to be fucking impossible odds. I was already determined to fucking become Howie’s enforcer by the end of our senior year—now I’m even more fucking determined to do it, just to prove the fucker wrong about it being impossible to pass these classes.

And of course, I’m willing to fucking bet that taking these classes is only going to improve my odds of being successful at this, rather than failing. I know the teacher just fucking said that the only successful enforcers that have graduated from this school have been the ones that spent all their goddamned time studying enforcing in the library, but I ain’t that fucking passive of a person.

I ain’t planning to be that fucking passive of an enforcer either, ‘cuz I want to be in the goddamned middle of the action. So yeah, sure, I’ll read up on enforcing, ‘cuz it sounds like I need to fucking know exactly what I’m getting myself into, but I’m going to fucking rely on my own goddamn experience that I gain here to be able to prove myself fucking capable of watching Howie’s back.

I want to fucking prove to him and to myself that I am every fucking thing he needs in an enforcer. Okay, so the sound of having to be his clean-up crew is really fucking disgusting, but it’s not like I ain’t used to blood. I’ve been having to do my own goddamn laundry for a long fucking time now, considering my mother wouldn’t fucking touch any piece of clothing that had blood stains in it.

But that’s fucking fine. I know how to handle blood on clothes, and I’m sure I can fucking learn how to get rid of blood that gets onto any other fucking surface. I ain’t too goddamned sure, but I got a feeling that assassins aren’t fucking taught to be clean when they make their kills. They are just taught to fucking kill. I mean, I could be wrong on that account, but it doesn’t make any goddamned sense to me for an assassin to be taught how to make a clean kill unless it’s absolutely fucking essential for a job.

But, hell, why would it be essential? A job is basically given to an assassin who then does every fucking thing he can to kill the person without letting anyone fucking know that the person is dead. So there isn’t no fucking reason to make the kill clean, since there won’t be any fucking body missing the person that gets killed.

So, from what the Professor has said so far, I get that I’m supposed to be Howie’s back-up. I’m supposed to keep him from getting sent to jail, and to take his place if it looks like I can’t fucking do that on the hopes that he will find me valuable enough to get me released. And then I got to be the person who cleans up the shit he messes up when he makes a kill. I got to make sure the bodies are disposed of in a way that makes them fucking impossible for people to find and I got to make sure that I get rid of any fucking evidence that potentially points to Howie as the goddamned killer. And then, which is my favorite fucking thing that she’s said so far about being an enforcer, I got to be his goddamned bodyguard.

I mean, I got a feeling that he don’t need a fucking bodyguard, but if another assassin wants to jump him, I got no fucking problem taking the assassin down for Howie, assuming I know how to fucking fight on par with the assassin by that point in time.

I mean, fuck. I love to fight. I love the fucking way it feels when I feel flesh rip and bones break under my hands. So yeah, I’m fucked up. I’m obviously fucked up, because I’m willing to become a goddamned enforcer for an assassin. No normal fucking person would be willing to do this shit. I mean, hell. Think about it.

It means being willing to sacrifice fucking everything for a guy that is essentially just going to use you to cover up his own fucking tracks. There ain’t a whole lot of fucking people out there willing to step back and let someone else take all the fucking credit. Of course, I’m more than willing to let Howie take the credit for the lives he takes, even if I have to scapegoat myself and say that I committed the murders. That don’t fucking matter.

I don’t need the glory of the fucking spotlight. I’ve never wanted to be fucking front and center in the first goddamn place. The only fucking thing that I’ve ever wanted was to be recognized by someone. To feel fucking useful. And I can do that by doing this.

“Now, a lot of assassins don’t realize this until they reach the program they have to enroll it after graduation,” Professor Lyle says. “But an enforcer is supposed to set terms on the arrangement he shares with the assassin.” She looks straight at Howie when she says her next words, and they make me feel all warm inside when I hear them. “So that screaming I heard from him while you were torturing him during homeroom? That’s unacceptable behavior, Mr. North. If you really want him to be your enforcer, you need to refrain from torturing him. I don’t care if he does something that pisses you off so much you want to kill him. If, overall, you want to turn Jake into your enforcer, you need to keep him in tact. So this better be the only time I ever see him with any broken bones. And I better never fucking hear a word about you torturing him again. Are we clear?”

Howie sucks in a deep breath when the chick starts verbally assaulting him, and I see, for the first fucking time in my life, what Howie looks like when he’s actually fucking afraid of someone. I can see the muscles in his neck fucking clenching and there’s a bit of a tremor running along his spine, but it’s so fucking imperceptible that I’m surprised that I can even fucking tell it’s there.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Howie says. “I won’t torture him again. I wasn’t aware that there were any guidelines that govern the actions between an assassin and his enforcer. Now that I am, I will make sure that I don’t do anything to harm him like that again.”

“Good,” Professor Lyle says. “And I knew you weren’t aware of those guidelines. That is the only reason you are still capable of walking right now. I’ll go over those guidelines now, so that you will know what is and isn’t okay for you to do.”

“First of all, as you might have guessed, you don’t torture your enforcer. Not for any reason. When you torture your enforcer, you cripple yourself. You make it impossible for him to do the job that he is meant to do. How is Jake going to be able to defend you from others if he is unable to use his hands? How will he be able to clean up your messes?”

“The answer is, of course, that he won’t be able to do any of those things if you torture him for any reason you feel like. Even when he does something that you think is unforgiveable, you don’t torture him.”

“Enforcers, especially the ones who voluntarily decide to walk the path of enforcing, deserve our respect and our friendship. Even more so than the other assassins that you know, your enforcer will be your lifeline. They will be closer to you even than a lover will be, except that they won’t be your lover.”

“What they will be is the only person that you know you can trust, no matter what. If you torture an enforcer, all you’re going to do is damage the trust that lies between the two of you. And breaking trust is a horrible thing to do because it means that your enforcer will start to resent you. And once your enforcer resents you, he will be able to turn on you completely.”

“Because our enforcers are the only people who get to know absolutely everything about us. We confide everything in them so they know our strengths, our weaknesses, and our habits—both the good ones and the bad ones. We need them to know all of this so that they are able to do their jobs properly. They keep us safe, and in turn, we keep them safe from us. Do you understand that now?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Howie says. “I understand.”

“Good. Now the next thing you need to understand about the relationship between an enforcer and an assassin is that the enforcer sets the rules. Not you. I know you probably think that an assassin should have the right to determine everything, but you’re getting it backwards.”

“Enforcers are our enablers. They allow us to do our jobs with a minimum amount of hassle. So it is our job to keep them from being dissatisfied. That means that if you think you are an assassin that wants to take contracts for those people out there who want their wives killed for being whores, that you can’t take those contracts without the agreement of your enforcer.”

“If your enforcer wants to, he is able to veto any or all of the contracts you take. An enforcer decides which contracts he is comfortable backing an assassin up for, and anything else is thrown to someone else. Because we cannot ask our enforcers to do something that violates their morality. Doing so is worse than torturing them physically, because it messes with their minds.”

“And it is very dangerous to mess with the minds of the people who do their jobs and keep us safe from the dangers we deal with. You might think it’s crazy to deal with dangers as an assassin, but there are very real threats. Both here at this school, where other assassins are vying against each other for power, and out in the real world, where there are people lying in wait, just hoping to catch an assassin on a bad day.”

“So that means that your enforcer sets the rules. He determines what moral code you follow when you accept a contract, and he also determines whether or not you can take a contract outside of that code. He is the one who sets the terms on the way your relationship will play out, not you. Do you all understand that?”

A murmur of agreement runs through the class, but all I can fucking think about is how fucking relieved I am to hear that there are rules like these out there that govern the interaction between an assassin and his enforcer. It means I can rest easy, because there’s no fucking way that Howie is going to risk torturing me now.

It means that I can actually fucking try and do what Howie wants me to do without living in constant fucking fear that I’m going to screw something up and end up having him torture me for failure. It means that I will be able to do the shit I want to do and I won’t have to fucking concern myself over whether or not I’m going to end up being tortured.

But more than that, it means that Howie doesn’t get to fucking control everything I do while I’m at this school. I’m sure that frustrates the hell out of him, too, because he’s such a goddamned control freak, but it relieves me. It means that I can deviate from his plans if I fucking feel like it. Professor Lyle has just given me an out clause that I plan on fucking using.

“Now that I’ve gotten that little bump out of the way,” she says. “Let’s refocus on what being an assassin actually means. Like I said, the first rule is not to get caught. The second, naturally, is to maintain a healthy relationship with your enforcer. The third is to keep yourself in fighting shape all year round, because you never know when you will be called on to do a job.”

“The fourth rule concerns the contracts you take. As I already mentioned, your enforcers are able to veto anything they wish. But as an assassin, you are not allowed to agree to take on a contract of any sort for anything less than five million dollars. We aren’t hit men. Those guys do the petty killing and the ones who get caught.”

“We do the dangerous stuff. The things that could get most of us shot on sight if our government ever found out what we were doing. We take on contracts to kill foreign leaders or leaders in our own country, depending on the price. Our own political leaning has no bearing on the jobs we take, because as assassins we are required to maintain political neutrality.”

“But we also do things that may seem petty to others, if the sum offered is high enough. We will kill wives, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, entire families even, if the sum offered meets our minimum of 5 million.”

“And the last rule, which is the one that is most often ignored and the one that causes the most upheaval in our community is this: Do not treat other assassins as your enemy. This means that, while you may divide into different factions for different things, that you recognize that we are all still a community, no matter what we believe to be the right course of action.”

She looks around the room and realizes that no one is going to say anything. “Okay,” she says. “That’s all for today’s lesson. You’ll have your first Melding Class on Wednesday. Tomorrow is a free day, so spend it however you’d like. The same goes for Thursday. Your first Dirty Tactics class will happen on Friday.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Six

 

          I follow Howie out of the classroom after Professor Lyle dismisses us, and he is silent all the way back up to our dorm. I guess the lecture that she’s just given to him has got him thinking. Of course, if I’d been the subject of that lesson, I’d be lost in thought too.

          Once we get to our room, he sits down on his bed and motions for me to do the same. I take a seat, because I don’t really see any other option at this point, and he takes a deep breath before he starts talking, his eyes downcast.

          “I want to apologize to you for the finger, Jake,” he says, sounding hesitant.

          I’m not going to lie. It kind of creeps me out to hear Howie sound so unsure of himself. I guess that Professor Lyle is someone that he really respects, because I never could have imagined him apologizing to me before now. And honestly, I’m not really sure I want his apology.

          “Why do you want to apologize to me?” I ask him. “From where I’m sitting, you said you were going to do something and you did it. If you feel the need to fucking apologize for shit, then don’t do it in the first goddamned place. Besides, you are only trying to make amends over that shit because the teacher basically fucking told you to.”

          He stares at me in shock. It’s one of the first times I have ever seen pure, unfiltered emotion on his face. He holds his hands up helplessly. “I don’t really know what to say to that,” he admits. “I thought that I was supposed to keep an enforcer in line, so that’s what I was doing.”

          I roll my eyes at him. “You’re a fucking moron, Howie,” I tell him. And I’m fucking relishing in the fact that I can swear at him again. I ain’t got no fucking fear of him trying to torture me again, ‘cuz I’m pretty fucking sure if he does it, that teacher chick will make him regret it.

          “I know,” he says. “But I don’t understand how apologies work. I don’t ever apologize to people.”

          “Then don’t start doing it now,” I tell him. “My finger’s fucking broken. It will heal. It ain’t that big a fucking deal, because you aren’t going to torture me again. It’s already in the fucking past, Howie, so much the fuck on.”

          “How are you able to accept all of this so calmly?” he asks me. “I just…if I were in your position, I’d be doing everything I could to get away from here, not trying to find a way to make a place for myself in this world.”

          “Does that mean you want to find a way out for yourself?” I ask him. “Because I understand what that feels like. Living in a place where no one gives a shit about you or what you do…wanting to escape the world around you. I’ve already been there. I lived in hell my entire life. To me, this world of yours is a fucking opportunity, not a setback.”

          “I’m not looking for a way out of this world,” Howie says. “I love my world. My parents are amazing people and I think I’m a pretty accomplished person myself, even if it is a bit egotistical to say that of myself. I enjoy living in a world that doesn’t view everything in the stark black and white I experienced while I attended middle school with you. The morals here are so much looser and it isn’t something I want to leave.”

          “But you are somehow managing to come into a world like this that is so different from your world, that it makes me wonder how the hell you are able to handle it so well. Because I know I didn’t handle my first foray into your world very well. It was all I could do not to kill that teacher on the first day we met.”

          I snort. “You mean that asshole teacher who you yelled at for judging me?”

          “Yeah. And then you asked me what I’d done to him to turn him white in fear and I got a little flippant with you, because I thought maybe I’d done something that had revealed my true nature to you.”

          “No,” I tell him. “I didn’t have any fucking clue until yesterday that you were an assassin. And it surprised the shit out of me, because you always seemed to go out of your goddamned way to be nice to every fucking body around. I honestly started to wonder if you were fucking human, because you were too fucking nice to be real.”

          Howie stares at me. “Is that why you are able to accept me bringing you to this school with so much ease? Is that why you don’t feel like I betrayed you? I was never really real to you?”

          “You were weird,” I tell him, sensing the insecurity lurking underneath. “But I thought you were real. I mean, I tried a few times to do what I thought you would do in some of the situations I found myself in. It never worked, of course, ‘cuz I always lost my fucking temper, but the few times I tried to be nice, you were always the person I was trying to imitate.”

          “And now that you’ve found out that I’m nowhere near as nice as you thought I was? How are you coping with that?”

          I grin at home, and hold up my finger. “Considering I am not even remotely pissed off at you for this shit, I think I’m coping just fine. I think finding out that you do get angry and you do get violent helped me come to terms with this world you live in more than anything fucking else I’ve seen here.”

          “Oh,” Howie says. “So. Professor Lyle said that you get to set boundaries as my enforcer. Do you want to discuss those? Are there any parts of my plans that I explained to you last night that you think are unreasonable?”

          “We can discuss them,” I tell him. “As for your plans, you only told me your long-term goals and the shit you wanted me to do today. I’ve already done all of today’s tasks, so there’s no point in rehashing that. And your long-term goal of getting all of the students in this school recruiting enforcers instead of victims was one I supported all along.”

          “I guess that makes sense,” Howie says. “Since your life is affected by the curriculum at this school, just like the lives of all the other scholarship students.”

          “Yep,” I say. “Now. What did she mean exactly by what kind of guidelines I can set?”

          “Anything you want,” Howie says, giving a small shrug. He seems like he’s unconcerned, but I can hear the edge of tension in his voice. He’s afraid that I’m going to ask him to do something unreasonable and that he will have to find another enforcer.

          I don’t plan to ask for anything unreasonable, though, because I’m not an unreasonable person. “Okay,” I tell him. “First of all, just to make it clear, no more torture or threats of torture. I ain’t a goddamned rag doll for you to play with.”

          Howie looks faintly amused. “I think that was already ensured by the warning Professor Lyle gave me in class today, but I’ll agree to it verbally in your presence as well. So no torture or torture threats. What else?”

          “I can call you whatever the fuck I please, including Howie, whenever the hell I feel like it. If I’m supposed to be your enforcer, then being able to call you by a nickname like that is going to serve two purposes. The first of which being that it will keep me happy, because I fucking hate calling you Howard. And the second is that it will help reinforce my image as your enforcer to the rest of the goddamned school. If they hear me calling you Howie and realize that I’m the only fucking person allowed to use that nickname, then they are going to think twice about fucking with me. Not to mention, they are going to become a little more afraid of you, because it’s going to show them that you have just enough emotion to make you dangerous. More dangerous than the people that don’t have any.”

          “Okay,” Howie says. “But you didn’t have to give a speech on it. I figured that would be one of the things you would ask for anyway, considering you’ve spent the last three years calling me Howie.”

          “Good,” I say. “You’ve already agreed to one of the others, because you promised to teach me to fight on par with the assassins around here. Which I am definitely going to need to know how to do if I’m supposed to guard your back from them. I know the teacher said that assassins aren’t supposed to gang up on each other and shit, since this is supposed to be a community or whatever, but you’re all goddamned assassins. That means that there is a cutthroat nature to this world to fucking begin with, and I ain’t going to take the risk that someone manages to fucking kill you in your sleep just because I don’t have the training I need to keep you safe.”

          Howie chuckles. “Jake, you just want an excuse to fight one of us.”

          I scowl at him, then relent and grin. “Okay, fine. You got me. I want to be able to go out and pick a fight whenever the fuck I want, without having to worry about dying in the process. That means I need to be able to fight on par with you guys, or I’m just going to end up dead the first time I have to fight an assassin—whether it’s for your benefit or for my own goddamned amusement.”

          “I really don’t want you to fight other assassins unless you have to,” Howie says. “Because anything you do as my enforcer will reflect on me. So if you go out and start fighting random assassins, then it’s going to start look like I’ve told you to go out and pick fights with people. Would you mind restraining yourself there?”

          “Since you asked, sure. I won’t go looking for a fight unless someone comes to me looking for one first. And if someone tries to pick a fight with you, then I got every fucking right in the world to jump in head first and beat them back.”

          “Fine with me. Anything else?”

          “Yeah,” I tell him. “There is one last thing. The contracts you take… I need for you to only accept jobs where the person being targeted is actually a fucking scumbag. I can’t handle the guilt of knowing that I’m aiding in the murder of someone’s husband or wife just because they cheated and now their spouse is pissed off.”

          “I don’t like it, really,” Howie says. “Because I’d prefer to be able to work any job. But I’ll abide by it, because I do think you are going to be a great asset, Jake. Even after a day here, you’re already taking everything in stride. I have a feeling that if we work together, there is nothing that the two of us can’t accomplish.”

          I roll my eyes at him. “Save the sentimental shit for someone else. I’m not interested in hearing it. What I do want to know is how long it’s going to fucking take for this finger to heal, because as soon as it heals, I want to start the fighting lessons.”

          “Two or three months,” Howie says, looking a little bit abashed.

          It’s so fucking weird to see him like this. He seems so cowed right now. I’m used to confident Howie, not this weird fucking person sitting in front of me.

          “Fuck me, that’s a long time,” I say. Then I change the subject, because I really don’t want to fucking deal with brooding Howie much longer. “So tell me, what was growing up as an assassin like?”

          He smiles at me, though I can tell the question startles him. “Hard,” he says. “Everything about growing up as an assassin is hard.”

          I snort. “No fucking shit. Care to be a little more specific?” Just to prod him into revealing more, I add, “Professor Lyle did say that an assassin is supposed to treat their enforcer as a confidant. If you want me to be successful at this shit, open the fuck up to me already.”

          Howie starts at those words and then smiles, but at least this time it’s a fucking normal Howie smile instead of that creepy ass smile that says he’s a million miles away thinking about things that I will never fucking understand.

          “Okay,” he says. “I was five years old when I picked up my first weapon. My parents had taken me to a playground to mingle with other children. You see, they are a bit unusual for assassins. Instead of taking me to the playgrounds that other children of assassins frequented, they took me to the playgrounds and parks that normal children visited.”

          “A few days after my fifth birthday, they took me to a playground close to our house. There was a jungle gym there that I liked to climb and I got all the way to the top before anyone else showed up. But then more people started showing up and there was another kid who climbed to the top.”

          “Instead of being willing to share the jungle gym, the way the majority of the kids did back then, he pushed me off of it. I got so angry that I found the biggest and sharpest piece of mulch I could and climbed back up the jungle gym to get my revenge.”

          “That’s when I made my first kill,” Howie admits. “I stabbed the kid in the eye with the mulch. I got lucky when it happened, because all of the other kids had moved to the other side of the playground, where the jungle gym was hidden from view. And the only people in sight of me and this kid on the jungle gym were my parents, who watched me make the kill.”

          “They didn’t say a word to me after it happened. Not at the playground, anyway. My mom just grabbed the kid’s body and moved it before anyone noticed what had happened to the guy. I don’t know what she did with the body, but it was never found, because my mom is one of the best enforcers in the world.”

          “When my parents took me home afterwards, my dad explained to me calmly what I’d just done and why it meant that I would have to start a new school in the fall. I’d been looking forward to attending the public school in my district, but my dad told me that doing that would just make things harder on me in the long run, because I wouldn’t be able to fit in with the other kids. I had too much of an instinct for violence. I was too willing to kill when angered.”

          “That surprises me to hear,” I tell him. “Because I never would have guessed that you were an angry person as a kid. Or that you killed someone when you were five. But it does make me wonder…do you feel anything when you kill? Or is it just something you do?”

          Howie shrugs. “It’s hard to explain that, because it’s different every time. When I killed that kid, I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that I was angry that he had pushed me and I retaliated in the only way that made sense to me. I didn’t understand until my dad explained to me that I had killed him. I didn’t understand what death was.”

          “But my first intentional kill happened when I was eight. Because it was a lesson that I was taught in the elementary curriculum at this Academy. Any child aged eight has to kill someone that the administration brings in from the outside. When they do, it means they are able to kill successfully and it proves to the administration that the kid actually belongs in the world of assassins.”

          “Are there ever any kids who can’t carry through? Are there kids who just can’t make themselves kill the person that the administration tells them they have to kill?”

          Howie nods. “There are a few every year. In my grade, there were only two. When a potential assassin can’t kill that early in life, they are sent to a different school designed to teach them how to be enforcers. So a lot of us assassins are related to enforcers, because enforcers don’t have the stomach to actually land the killing blow.”

          My brow furrows as I remember the story he told the class about his mom. “But your mom was able to kill. Didn’t she become an enforcer?”

          He nods. “Like I said, it’s different with every kill. When she killed her mark when she was eight, there was no emotional connection to the man. But when she had to bring a student to this school and kill her, she couldn’t handle the aftermath of the kill. She had to kill her best friend to graduate and after that, she became unable to kill. She lost her desire, I guess. Well, I wouldn’t say desire. I’d say it’s more like she lost the will to kill. But she was already so immersed in this culture that it would have been impossible for her to do anything besides what she did by becoming an enforcer.”

          “Gotcha,” I tell him. “So you killed accidentally when you were five and purposefully when you were eight. How did the intentional kill cause you to react?”

          Howie shrugs. “I didn’t have much of a reaction at all. Honestly, it didn’t bother me to kill a complete stranger, because I had no connection to him. But.” He hesitates. “I told you before how I had to torture one of our classmates, right?”

          “Yeah.”

          “Well, doing that was incredibly difficult for me, because I knew the guy. I knew exactly what I needed to do and say to break him, but it was almost impossible for me to get through the agony it caused me to torture him. And don’t think it wasn’t agonizing for me, because it was. I threw up so much that night that I think I probably lost twenty pounds.”

          “So an emotional connection will make it hard for you to kill someone, but not impossible,” I surmise.

          “Yeah,” he says. “I doubt I’ll ever have the kind of reaction that my mother had, because I am not so emotional that I will fall apart over killing. Even if it comes down to me having to kill you, I don’t think that I will turn away from the path of the assassin. There’s just too much in me that wants to end lives.”

          “But you want to avoid ending mine.”

          “Yes, of course I do. Like I told you before, I’ve always considered you to be my best friend. I don’t want that to change now that I’ve brought you into my world. I never wanted that to change to begin with. I like you, Jake. You’re loud and proud of who you are and you don’t even see the worth you have. But you do have worth. I’ve always admired you.”

          “Admired me?” I ask, feeling skeptical. And a little concerned, ‘cuz it ain’t like Howie to be so open with his emotions. Fuck, maybe I was a little too harsh when I told him he needed to open up and treat me like a confidant. ‘Cuz, I ain’t going to lie, it’s fucking weird to hear him saying this kind of shit to me.

          “Yes,” he says. “Because you have always been the kind of person who sticks to his morals no matter what. But you also have this ability to be flexible with your morals without losing sight of the core meaning of them that makes me wonder if you are sane. I mean, I’ve known people with certain personal ethics, but you take it to an entirely different level.”

          “You have never stood for anyone pushing you around, especially those people who have tried over the years, to tell you how you should act or what kinds of things you should like. You’ve pushed back constantly against the people who have done everything in their power to hold you down, even when the people that have been holding you back have been the members of your own family. There is nothing there that doesn’t impress me.”

          “And on top of all of that, you somehow manage to keep yourself out of the business of the people around you and yet still be supportive of them. I watched you deal with Jess for years and even though you argued with her about drugs, you never once tried to actually get her to stop dealing. Because you can present your opinion and not feel like you have to prove to the rest of the world that it is the only one, that is the right one, and that no one else has the right to their own thoughts or lifestyles.”

          “And that is truly the reason I chose to bring you to this school. Because I felt like your temperament and the world would mesh. You have ethics, but you also adjust your morals to suit your needs. You are able to walk in a world and stay untouched by the biggest changes that occur and you are willing to allow the people around you to live their lives in their own ways.”

          “You don’t make it a requirement for the people you become friends with to agree with all of your opinions or even your views on things, and that is something that I will always admire, because I don’t understand how you are able to be so strong, especially with the crap in your past that you’ve had to deal with for so long.”

          I stare at him. “What the fuck did you do with Howie, man?” I ask him, half-complaining, half being serious. “I mean, shit. I know I said you could confide in me and all, but that don’t mean you got to get all mushy and shit.”

          Howie grins at me. “Yeah, but you like knowing the truth straight out, and if I don’t tell you the truth the way I see it, I have a feeling that you are going to end up being mad at me for it.”

          “Well, fine,” I say. “I know the truth now. You’re a sentimental idiot who thought it was a good idea to bring his best friend into a world full of assassins. Which is a weird fucking thing to say, considering the fact that the world of assassins isn’t exactly a safe place for those of us who aren’t assassins. But hey, who am I to judge?”

          Howie rolls his eyes, then smirks at me. “And that’s exactly what I’m talking about, Jake. You can look at a situation and not judge it as good or bad. You can just accept things as they are.”

          “Yeah,” I tell him. “I’m pretty fucking good at rolling with the punches, ‘cuz I’ve had a fucking lot of practice. I stopped being bothered by my world being turned upside down after the first few fucking times my mother decided to change the rules up on me. So this ain’t nothing fucking different to me.”

          “Does it bother you, though?” Howie asks, tone turning serious again.

          “Does what fucking bother me?”

          “The fact that I brought you into this world and asked you to become an enforcer. The fact that if I were a normal assassin that the truth wouldn’t be that I brought you here to become an enforcer, but to kill you in order to become an assassin myself. Well, a recognized professional assassin, at least.”

          “Are you asking me again if it bothers me that you brought me into this school because you feel like I should feel betrayed by your actions or some shit? ‘Cuz I got to fucking tell you, Howie, hearing that shit is getting pretty goddamned old.”

          “I can’t help it,” Howie says. “Your actions don’t make any sense to me.”

          “Then take a page out of my book,” I tell him. “My actions don’t need to fucking make sense. Just accept the shit I say at face value and you’re good. Like the code of honor I live by fucking says, I don’t fucking lie unless I’ve got a really good goddamned reason to do so. So stop fucking worrying about whether or not I’m telling you the fucking truth, and focus on figuring out what the fuck we need to do in order to get the people who aren’t on your side yet on your side.”

          Howie sighs. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll try, but I am not promising anything. I’m not good at letting things go.”

          I snort. “Yeah, I’m starting to get that message, Howie. Kinda funny, though, when you think about it.”

          “How so?”

          “’Cuz it’s like you bringing me here reversed our usual roles. Back in middle school, you were the one who didn’t hold grudges against people no matter what. And I was the one who couldn’t let shit go. Now, it’s like you can’t let shit go and I ain’t got no problem dismissing this whole situation out of hand. Like it’s just a usual fucking occurrence.”

          “It’s not usual, though.”

          “I know that, Howie,” I say. “I’m not a fucking moron. But it’s a whole hell of a lot fucking better than the shit that I got used to back at my house. Even if it is a world full of fucking killers, at least I know where I fucking stand. And that, well. That shit means more to me than I think I will ever be able to properly express.” And it’s true. Even if Howie can’t fucking see it, I can. He saved me from a life full of torment and neglect. That’s why I will be loyal to him through all of this shit.

          “So let me make sure I have all of this straight,” Howie says. “The guidelines you are setting on our assassin and enforcer partnership are that I don’t torture you, that I let you call me Howie, that I have to teach you to fight, and that I don’t take contracts you find morally reprehensible when I start taking jobs.”

          “Yes, Howie,” I say. “Now can we please go eat lunch? I don’t get why you dragged me back to the room after class anyway, seeing as it lasted until fucking noon. I am starving.”

          He rolls his eyes at me. “I brought you back here so we could get all of this stuff straightened out, because I don’t want to make any more mistakes that will cause Professor Lyle to lecture me during class. It makes me look bad in front of the other assassins here, but it also scares me. She’s a dangerous woman.”

          “Yeah, I kinda figured that much out already,” I tell him. “She seems like she could take someone’s head off without thinking about it. Granted, she did say something about being an assassin who will take on any type of job, if I remember right. So that means she’s more dangerous than assassins who stick to one type of contract?”

          “No,” Howie says, shaking his head for emphatic effect. “The contracts an assassin takes are decided by their enforcer, just like she said. That means that the enforcer she’s paired with doesn’t have a very strong sense of morality, so is willing to clean up after any mess she makes.”

          “Oh,” I say. It makes me feel kind of stupid, really, because I feel like I probably should have had that shit figured out without getting Howie to explain it all to me like he just did. I hate it when people have to spell shit out for me. It makes me feel fucking pathetic.

          “But she’s not dangerous because she’s got an enforcer with no morals. She’s dangerous because she has been known to kill the students here that piss her off. Even though she went over the rules assassins live by, they are really more the guidelines we live by, rather than rules. And the one that is the most often broken is the one that says we don’t attack other assassins, just like she said.”

          “But she’s also the only teacher that has ever been known to kill her students. Some of the teachers here will hurt a student in order to make a point, but no one besides her has ever killed a student. But she’s such a good teacher that the administration think that she’s worth the risk, so she won’t ever be fired.”

          “That’s why you were scared when she started lecturing you,” I say, finally understanding. “She really was pissed off at you about hurting me when she found out that I’m supposed to be your enforcer.”

          “Yes,” Howie says. “She really was. If I hadn’t managed to keep my temper in that room and keep my tone respectful when she started lecturing me, I have absolutely no doubt that I would be dead right now. She is known for her hatred of ignorance and I definitely managed to do exactly the right thing to piss her off.”

          “Is she the type that holds a grudge?” I ask. “Or will she let it go when she knows that the problem has been remedied?”

          “I’ve heard various things,” Howie says. “Some of the rumors suggest that once she sets her eyes on you, then she will always be watching you, and a single misstep can result in her deciding that you’re better off dead. But other rumors say that if you fix the issue she brings to your attention the first time it comes up, that she drops it completely. I don’t know which one I believe, but I can admit that I’m scared of it being the first.”

          “If it is, I’ll deal with it,” I tell him.

          He gives me a startled look. “How are you going to do that?”

          “I’m an enforcer. More importantly, I’m your enforcer. And she was pretty adamant today in class that assassins should always respect enforcers. So if I have to, I’ll pull that card on you and get her to back down.”

          “That’s kind of a genius plan,” Howie says. “But how are you so sure she will actually back down if you talk to her?”

          I don’t actually have any fucking clue how I will get the scary ass assassin teacher to back down, but I’m willing to say anything right now to get Howie to calm the fuck down so we can go to lunch. “Call it a hunch,” I tell him. “And you know for a fucking fact how rare it is for one of my hunches to be wrong.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	12. Chapter 27

        During lunch, I sit with Talon, Marvin, and Alan, who have all separated from their assassin partners in order to get some privacy. I don’t really blame them, because I need some time away from Howie myself. That fucking conversation he just pulled me into in our room was rather intense, and I am willing to do almost anything to get away from him for a little bit.

          I might be his acting enforcer, and all, but I ain’t got no plans of letting that rule my entire life. I need to make my own friends, aside from Howie, if I am going to be able to survive in this crazy ass world.

         Although the three of them were talking to each other before I entered the cafeteria, when I take a seat next to Alan, they all fall silent. “You got a fucking problem with me or something?” I ask. I got no fucking intention of putting up with the goddamned silent treatment from these guys. And yeah, okay, it fucking bothers me that the three of them are treating me like a goddamned stranger.

          I mean, when we were brought here together, the three of them treated me like a regular person. They didn’t fucking judge me for the kind of clothes I was wearing or my aggressive attitude. I guess all of that has fucking changed though. It pisses me the fuck off, too, because all I’m fucking doing is what I need to do in order to survive.

Even though I attempt to make eye contact with all three of them, none of them will meet my fucking eyes. “I’ll ask you one more fucking time,” I say. “And if you don’t fucking answer me, I’m going to get pissed off. Do you have a fucking problem with me or what?”

          Talon shifts uncomfortably in her seat and still won’t meet my eyes. For his part, Alan glances at me and then down at his food. He puts the fork he’s holding down and takes a deep breath. Just when it looks like someone’s finally going to give me a goddamned answer, Marvin beats him to it.

          “Yes,” Marvin says, meeting my eyes squarely for the first fucking time since I sat down with them. “I have a problem with you, Jake.”

          I stare at him, waiting for him to continue. After a full thirty seconds passes, I realize he’s got no fucking intention of elaborating. “Okay,” I say. “So tell me what your fucking problem is.” While he might want to keep all of that shit to himself, I got no interest in letting him. I don’t want to fucking lose the first semi-friends I’ve ever fucking had—Jess and Howie aside—because of the shit that went down in the class with Professor Lyle.

          Marvin rolls his hair over the back of his hand once, then unrolls it. He sighs and lets his hair fall so that it’s resting on his chest. “How can you accept all of this so calmly?” he asks, eyes clouding with confusion tinged with a hint of panic.

          “If you think I’m fucking calm, then you aren’t paying any goddamned attention,” I tell him. “In case you fucking forgot, I just had my finger broken.” I hold my mangled hand up to make my point.

          He flinches, but he keeps talking. I got to give the guy some fucking credit. Even though he looks really fucking girly with his hair so goddamned long, he definitely has a fucking backbone. Which, fuck. I already knew that. I saw that shit in class earlier, when he decided for himself that he was going to take the classes at this school without the blessing of the assassin that brought him here.

          “Fine. You’re not calm. But you’re still supporting Howard. Why? It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

          “Why doesn’t it make sense?” I ask him.

          “Because he brought you here to kill you,” Marvin states matter-of-factly, eyeing me like he thinks I’m a fucking idiot for not grasping that point clearly.

          “Wow,” I tell him. “You really haven’t been paying any fucking attention, have you?”

          “Hey, now. Wait—

          I don’t give him a chance to finish. “Listen,” I say. “Maybe the assassin that brought you here brought you here to kill you. I don’t fucking know. I don’t know what the motives of any of the assassins in this school happen to be, except for Howie’s. And his motive, as he stated really fucking clearly, was never to bring me here to kill me. His motive for bringing me here was to make me his goddamned enforcer.”

          Marvin stares at me, his mouth hanging open. He shuts it and squeezes his eyes shut tightly. “Is that enough for you?” he asks, and the words are so goddamned quiet I have to strain to hear him speaking. “Are you really able to put your faith in Howard’s words? What if they are just more empty promises?”

He sounds almost desperate and I’m starting to fucking see that the reason he feels threatened by me is because he doesn’t have a fucking friendship with Slim. It could very well be the case that Slim belongs to Tanner or Cornell’s group, and if that’s the case, then his so-called friend really did bring him here to kill him. I don’t fucking know, because I don’t know the history between them, but if he’s this fucking distressed over this shit, I’m guessing it ain’t too fucking good.

“I think,” Alan says, speaking slowly. “That what Marvin wants to know is why you are able to trust Howard the way you are, given the fact that he brought you here under false pretenses.”

“Because Howard’s never fucking lied to my face,” I tell them.

“Maybe not,” Alan concedes. “But it’s still a fact that he never told you the complete truth. And while that isn’t a direct lie, it’s still a lie of omission. So isn’t it then a fact that Howard has lied to you?”

I scowl at him. “I hate that shit. Lies of omission don’t fucking exist. If someone doesn’t tell me the complete truth about something, then I figure they got a damned good reason to keep the shit to themselves. I don’t consider it a fucking lie when someone fails to tell me everything, because not a single fucking one of us has ever told the complete truth about ourselves to another fucking person.”

Alan is starting to look uneasy. “Listen,” he says. “I’m not trying to start a fight with you.” He glances down at his uneaten lunch before he continues. “I’m the first to admit that I’m not very useful in a fight. I can count on one hand the number of fights I’ve won. So while it might make sense to you to become an enforcer, how is someone like me supposed to do that?”

I stare at him, completely stumped by the abrupt change in topic. “I don’t have all the fucking answers here,” I tell him. “I don’t even fucking know how I’m supposed to become an enforcer, so I ain’t got no fucking clue how to answer your questions about that shit.”

“But you seemed so at ease with Howard during class,” Talon blurts out, then covers her hand with her mouth.

I shrug. “I’ve known Howard for three years. Just like the three of you have known the fucking people who brought you here for three years. The shit we got dragged into by being brought here is pretty fucking insane, but that don’t mean that the people we’ve known for the last three years no longer fucking exist.”

“Doesn’t it bother you, though?” Marvin asks. “To know that your best friend brought you into a trap like this?”

I sigh. “I wish people would stop fucking asking me that question. Hell, at least from you guys, I fucking understand where it’s coming from. But even Howie is asking the same goddamned thing, and I don’t fucking know how to answer it.”

“Howard asked you that?” Alan asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, he fucking asked me that. He can’t understand why I don’t feel betrayed by this shit any better than you three can.”

“So why don’t you?” Talon asks.

I sigh again. “If it was that fucking simple to answer, I wouldn’t want people to stop fucking asking the question. Listen. I’m only going to say this once, so try to pay some goddamned attention to the answer.” I look at Marvin when I say that, and he winces but gives me a slight nod to let me know he is listening.

“Yes, it bothers me that I am surrounded by assassins. But I am not mad at Howie for throwing me into this world, because the world I left behind was a lot fucking rougher than this.” They all give me skeptical looks, which I can’t really blame them for, because it does sound pretty fucking ridiculous. “Look. The world I left behind me when I accepted the scholarship for this fucking school had no fucking use for me. Pretty much every fucking person I know thinks I’m a loser or a waste of space. No one ever fucking believed I would amount to anything in life.”

“Honestly, I was starting to fucking believe it myself. No one besides Howie and Jess would even fucking talk to me. My parents fucking hate me because I can’t be my goddamned brother, and my brother thinks I’m a fucking loser. Every fucking person around me decided I would never amount to a goddamned thing, despite never fucking taking a chance and trying to get to fucking know me.”

“Everyone fucking assumed shit about me that wasn’t fucking true, just because they fucking felt like it. Before I came to this fucking school, I spent all my free time fighting, because it was all I fucking had. It was the only area where anyone respected me at all, but that was all street shit. The few times I tried to join martial art schools, I got turned away because I ‘looked too violent.’”

“No matter where I fucking went or what I did, people made assumptions about me. Sometimes they were right, but most of the time they were just fucking judging me based on the fucking clothes I was wearing.” I take a deep breath, because this next part is going to be the fucking hardest to put into words.

“But Howie was always the fucking exception to the rule. The first fucking day we met, he stood up to our sixth grade teacher by telling the guy that judging me based on rumors was fucking rude. And maybe for most people, that would result in them becoming instant best friends. That didn’t fucking happen between me and Howie.”

“We did start hanging out, but you need to understand one very important fucking fact about me. At the time I met Howie, I was already fucking used to people trying to approach me in order to use me for their own fucking means. I don’t fucking trust anyone, because I always expect others to exploit me whenever they get the fucking chance.”

“So while started hanging out with Howie, I was always fucking suspicious of his motives. Because no one has ever fucking approached me without ulterior motives of their own. Fuck. I can’t even count how many people tried to talk to me because they thought I just needed a kind word or two from someone in order to become normal. As you can fucking imagine, those people didn’t last very long.”

“But Howie never fucked demanded anything from me. No matter what shit he was into or what I was into, he never tried to fucking pull me into his business and he never tried to fuck with mine. I guess I can say that I considered him a friend, in a very loose sense, because he was the only fucking guy my age that I could talk to without wanting to smash his face in.”

“Since he never fucking demanded anything from me, I never expected anything from him. And the fact that you guys feel betrayed by the assassin that brought you to this school just fucking tells me that you expected shit from them. I don’t know what you fucking expected from them, or even if they fucking agreed to live up to those expectations, but that shit doesn’t fucking matter to me right now.”

“Because the truth of the fucking matter is simple: We can’t go back to our old fucking lives. And honestly, how many of you actually fucking want to go back to the lives you had before this place? I mean, really fucking think about the question. Didn’t the three of you write in your fucking application essays that you wanted to get the fuck out of the places you came from?”

I can see by the startled looks they give me that they haven’t really thought about this much, but I don’t give them the fucking chance to interrupt me. “I mean, fuck. I don’t know about the three of you, but I made up my fucking mind a long time ago. I promised myself that I would find a fucking way to get away from the shithole I lived in and would take whatever fucking path presented itself to me, no matter how fucking horrible it seemed.”

“Because I always fucking believed that when I found a new path, I’d have the ability to start my fucking life over. I never fucking dreamed that it would be this path, but this is the path that fucking presented itself. So despite the fucking issues I have with this world, I will walk the fucking path that Howie has shown me. Because I fucking swore an oath to myself that I won’t ever fucking break.”

“Does it bother me that Howie brought me into this world? Yes. I think this world is fucking insane. I mean, fuck. I’m surrounded by killers and I’m supposed to learn how to be an enforcer for one. If I fail to become an enforcer, I’ll be killed. Nothing about that shit is pretty and it isn’t fucking easy to accept. But my oath—my word—is the most important fucking thing to me, and I will never fucking break it.”

“Do I feel betrayed by Howie for throwing me into this world? No. I feel fucking grateful, despite the crazy shit I know I’m going to have to fucking face, because he is still the fucking person that carved a fucking path away from my past for me. Yes, he brought me to a crazy ass world. But he brought me into a crazy ass world where I might be able to fucking do something with my life. Is it the way I fucking imagined my life going? Fuck no. Not even fucking close.”

“But that doesn’t matter to me, because at least here people aren’t fucking assuming that I’m a loser. I mean, yeah, okay, the curriculum states that scholarship students are supposed to fucking fail and be killed in four years. But it also has a fucking out clause for those of us who can succeed and it doesn’t fucking discriminate based on looks. The only fucking thing it hinges on is the assassin who brought us into this fucking school.”

“For me, that’s Howie. He’s the one who fucking brought me here. He’s the one who fucking said that he believes I can become his fucking enforcer, which means he believes that I am fucking capable of becoming an asset valuable enough for him to invoke the fucking out clause when graduation time rolls around.”

“Do I think Howie’s a nice fucking person? Not by a long shot. I think he’s a killer and I know he’s capable of unspeakable cruelty, because he broke my fucking finger in the most excruciating way possible. I know he won’t torture me anymore, but it wouldn’t fucking matter to me if that shit was still on the table.”

“Because at the end of the fucking day, it comes down to one goddamned simple fucking truth: Howie is the one who put enough fucking faith in me to believe I could survive this school. If I fail, he’s the one who will have to kill me. But if I fail, when I’m so fucking determined to succeed, then I won’t complain. I don’t do shit in half measures.”

“So I’m loyal to Howie because he believes in me. When it comes right down to it, that’s all that fucking matters. Because he’s the only fucking person I’ve ever fucking met in my entire goddamned life who has ever put any fucking trust in me at all. In return, I’m giving him mine. It’s that fucking simple.”

They all stare at me, completely stunned. Alan starts to speak, but stops himself when Howie comes up behind me. I stiffen automatically, because I fucking hate it when people stand behind me like that, but I force myself to relax. After all that shit I just said, if I make it seem like I don’t fucking trust having Howie at my back, I’m going to lose all my goddamned credibility.

“Howie, what the fuck are you doing?” I ask, my eyes still focused on the three scholarship students who started fucking interrogating me.

“Hmm. I was eavesdropping.”

Before I know it, Alan has moved over and Howie has taken up residence between the two of us. I turn to look at Howie. “Did you get the answer to your goddamned question, then?”

“Of course. I listened to your entire conversation, because I had a feeling it might come up.” He steals a fry off my plate. “These are pretty good. Do you mind?”

“Yes,” I tell him. “Get your fucking hands off my food. You know I hate that shit.”

His eyes darken for a moment and I can’t help fucking tensing at the sight. I mean, fuck. I know this guy is dangerous now, but I just can’t fucking help being myself. He shakes his head and the dark look is replaced with amusement. “I know,” he says. And steals another fry.

I scowl at him, but I don’t try to fucking stop him. A fucking fry is not worth fighting over. “Where the hell did you go, anyway?”

Howie sighs. “To deal with Tanner and Cornell.” At my questioning look, he continues. “Since the three of us are children of legends, we’re all looked to as leaders. So despite the fact the three of us view things from vastly different angles, we are expected to maintain a united front. To do that, we tend to have impromptu meetings during off hours.” He makes a face. “It’s distasteful, but it’s something that has to be done.”

Marvin is shaking, even though he is sitting across the table from me and Howie. I can’t tell if he’s shaking because he’s afraid or because he’s angry. Either way, he’s not fucking speaking. I guess his courage only extends so far.

Alan, on the other hand, is viewing Howie in a thoughtful way. “What things do you disagree on?” he asks.

Howie’s attention shifts from me to Alan for the first time. Fuck, I think this is the first time Howie has paid any goddamned attention to a scholarship student. Well, real attention. Comforting crying girls like Talon and calming down hysterics isn’t real attention. It’s fucking crisis management.

“I’m sorry,” Howie says. “Who do you belong to?”

Alan clenches his jaw, clearly insulted, and I’m starting to get fucking worried that he’s going to say something he shouldn’t. “I belong to myself,” he says, finally, though he’s speaking with gritted teeth. “If you are asking who brought me to this school, then the answer is Bree.”

Howie tilts his head, considering the guy beside him. “Hmm. Bree is one of mine, so I’ll let that little temper display slide.” His tone drops a few degrees. “There’s only one person in this school allowed to get an attitude with me. In case you didn’t notice, even Tanner and Cornell, who are considered my equals, are polite when they speak to me.”

Alan blanches. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and I can see his hands starting to shake from where I’m sitting.

Howie pats Alan’s leg with a free hand, which makes the guy completely freeze up. “As long as you understand,” he says. Then he turns to me, using the same icy tone. “Jake,” he says. “Keep your friends under control. I can’t foresee having use for an enforcer who can’t ensure respect for their assassin from nobodies like these.”

I swallow hard. Those words delivered in that tone are like a fucking punch in the gut. But he has a good fucking point. I don’t like that he called them nobodies, because I don’t think of them that way, but they aren’t fighters and they aren’t enforcers. Not yet, at least. Maybe never. It depends on their assassin partners.

Marvin opens his mouth. “That was un-

I lunge across the fucking table before I’m even aware I’m doing it and slam my hand across his mouth. “Shut up,” I hiss at him. “Do you really want to piss off the fucking assassin in this school that all the other fucking assassins are afraid of? Does that seem like a good fucking idea to you?”

Marvin pales and shakes his head no at a frantic pace, so I remove my hand and settle back in my seat.

Howie, of fucking course, watches the exchange with an amused glint in his eye. “Better,” he says to me. Then he turns to the three of them. “Jake is my enforcer. If you choose to be his friends, you need to respect that. He is the only person in this entire school who can talk to me the way he does without fear. But let me make it very clear. If any of you try to talk to me in the same manner, I will view it as disrespect and I will have you punished for it.”

He looks at Talon and Alan. “Because Gabriel and Bree are my subordinates, they will follow any order I give them. If I tell them to torture you, they won’t even blink. They will just obey.” He turns to Marvin. “As for you…you’re Slim’s boy, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Marvin says, voice near a whisper. Unlike Alan, he doesn’t even try to protest the idea he belongs to someone.

Howie smiles approvingly at him. “Good,” he says. “If you treat me with that kind of respect all the time, you’ll have no need to worry.” He looks at the other two. “The same goes for you.” Then he turns back to Marvin. “Slim is in Tanner’s group, which means I can’t order him around without going through Tanner. But before you think that is reason to relax, be assured that Tanner encourages torture much more readily than I do. Honestly, I’ll be surprised if you manage to survive the week without punishment from Slim. He’s known for his vicious streak, even amongst assassins. And while he’ll only take orders from Tanner, he’ll take suggestions from others. Especially ones he finds pleasurable. So watch your step. All of you.”

“Yes, sir,” Marvin says.

Howie raises an eyebrow at Talon and Alan, then turns to me. “Jake, are you really planning on being friends with people this slow on the uptake? If so, you really need to reconsider. I’d rather you didn’t do anything to harm your chances of becoming a successful enforcer.”

I scowl at Alan and Talon, even though it makes me feel a little fucking uneasy to do it. ‘Cuz it really fucking comes down to the fact that my survival here is more important to me than their survival here. This fucking world of assassins is cutthroat and brutal. I ain’t going to fucking make it by being soft.

Howie turns to them again. “In case it wasn’t clear,” he says. “You are to be respectful of me at all times, no matter what your personal opinion of me might be. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Alan says, echoed by Talon. Both of them are cowed, which doesn’t fucking surprise me. Howie has always been a force to be reckoned with, but now he’s in his own goddamned element.

“Now,” Howie says, directing his attention to Alan. “Let’s start over, shall we? I’ll make it simple. Who do you belong to?”

Alan trembles a little as he answers. “Bree, sir.”

Howie smiles. “Good. That means you’re one of mine by proxy.”

Alan hesitates, but forces himself to speak. “What exactly does that mean, sir?” he asks.

“It means that you answer to Bree. And that Bree answers to me. So if I tell you to do something, you do it without question. Even if Bree disapproves of it, she will never go against a direct order I give her. That means if I feel like cutting out the middle man in order to give you an order, you follow it without waiting for her to tell you to do so. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir,” Alan says. “Thank you.”

Howie smiles in approval. “Good. As long as you treat me like I am the one who has the power to make you endure insufferable agony if you do something I don’t like, I think we’ll get along just fine.”

“Yes, sir,” Alan says again. I can tell by his tone that he’s about in tears and I can’t fucking blame him. Because Howie is fucking hard for people to deal with at a standard level, let alone at his full fucking strength.

“Are you done fucking terrorizing my friends yet, Howie?” I ask him. I’m sick of watching this shit. “Or do you need to rub their fucking faces in the dirt some more?”

Howie’s smile vanishes in a second and he glares at me. I manage—barely—not to flinch at the coldness in his stare. “You’re lucky you’re my enforcer, Jake,” he says. “Because anyone else would be begging for their lives if they talked to me the way you just did.”

I shrug at him, someone managing to throw off the fucking stare. I guess somewhere deep inside me I really do fucking believe that he isn’t going to do shit to hurt me. “Maybe so,” I tell him. “But I ain’t fucking them. What I am is your goddamned enforcer and I’ll talk to you however I fucking want. Why the fuck did you decide you needed to lecture my friends on their fucking manners in the first goddamned place?”

“Because they need to understand,” Howie says. “That this school will eat them alive if they don’t learn how to adapt. And the first thing they need to do is accept their place in the hierarchy of it. I am just giving them some friendly advice.”

I snort. “It don’t sound like fucking friendly advice, Howie. It sounds like you fucking threatening them with torture if they don’t fucking treat you with respect.”

Howie smiles at me, but there’s still ice in his eyes. “Yes,” he says. “Except it’s not a threat. It’s a reality. And the hierarchy here is one where Tanner, Cornell, and I are at the very top. Shall I give you a demonstration?”

I nod slowly, though inside my stomach is churning. Is this a good fucking idea? I don’t fucking know. But I just fucking agreed, so I guess I’m going to fucking find out.

Howie stands, then jumps easily onto the top of the table, landing at a clear spot. “Gabriel, Bree, Marcus, Nate, Leah, James, Ellen, Kyle. Front and center. Right now.”

I don’t know what I fucking expected, but him jumping on the table and calling the shit out doesn’t seem to have fucking startled anyone but the scholarship students. I guess it’s a common fucking practice here.

After he announces the names and gives the solo order, he jumps down and takes a seat beside me, but this time he’s facing away from the table. I turn around with him, so I can see what the fuck his demonstration is going to consist of.

In under twenty seconds, all eight people he called for are standing in front of us, lined up sideways to the table. Gabriel, the first person in line, is staring straight fucking ahead of him, but he stopped a foot to the left of where Howie’s fucking seat is.

“One at a time,” Howie says. “Present yourselves to my new enforcer. You will guard him with your lives, if it comes down to that. After you present yourself to him, present yourselves to me. If you don’t meet the standards I require from all of you, you will all face punishment.”

“Why all of them?” I ask, curious in spite of myself.

“It’s my belief,” Howie says. “That when a person is part of a group that answers to one person who sets the standards for that group, then every person in that group should ensure that all the group members are meeting the standards. Thus, if one person is slacking off, then everyone is slacking off by failing to remedy the situation.”

I stare at him. “That’s fucking brilliant,” I say. Because it is. Fuck. I don’t know if I’m ever going to fucking understand this world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
